Signs and Void (Game Over) [TM2015]

[wgeurts]

You are?
:/
Then I'd go for Gamma with one of the other two?

Who else is confirmed town?

[Gammagooey]

Also I'm invoking my power as Guy Who Has Opinions to say that the default response to I'm catching up over the next X days should be "Post opinions or fuck off".

Opinions on just recent stuff or just isos or whatever is fine, as long as you don't assume that it's the one truth to rule this game that everyone else should follow, and preventing the game from becoming an apathy-filled wasteland of replacements who never bother catching up is something I'd like to avoid.

p-edit:oh hey things are dead

i'm fine with this.

[Gammagooey]

wgeurts just do your best to catch up over night and have opinions tomorrow

I actually don't think telling you about roleclaims and conf. town and etc. will be helpful atm, just read shit and say what you think about it all tomorrow.

[hitogoroshi]

VC 141 (Major Day 3, VC 5)

(6)

Formerfish:

vezokpiraka, Shadoweh, Cheetory6, singersigner, Gammagooey, Untrod Tripod [Lynch!]

(1)

wgeurts:

mastin2

(4)

Not Voting:

AngryPidgeon, Formerfish, ChannelDelibird, wgeurts

(Untrod Tripod)

With 11 players alive it's 6 to lynch. Major Day Three will end Tuesday, June 10th, at 9PM CST.

Major Day Three Deadline

(expired on 2015-06-10 20:00:00)

[hitogoroshi]

Spoiler: Power and unity.

They rode with a terrible vengeance.

The faces of the dead still burned in their minds, crying out for justice. Their decisions were swift, and their decisions were

right

.

Their first thing they killed wasn't even human. It was a strange, baleful aggregation of the leftover nothing that had set the whole struggle in motion. In a last desperate measure, it had struck back with the full fury of its hate, but it had been repelled. The group mind strove on.

And the second. Oh god, the second.

Lem, the Finality. Of course they knew her. Everyone knew her.

She was a demon, a legend, a terror. Even before the power of the Signs. To kill her alone would be impossible. But together, they had. They had. They had

killed Lem.

They slept intoxicated by their own possibility.

The second lynch of the day has occurred on

Formerfish.

You are

Lem

, the

Brute.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

.

Abilities

Shroud (Active)

Declare a Sign. If a player of that Sign uses a targeted Active ability on you, it will be blocked.


Suppress (Active)

Declare a Sign. Each player you target this night will have Active abilities from players of that sign targeted on them blocked.


Mastery (Passive)

On a Night where you use Shroud or Suppress, you get to take one more action than usual.


Pride (Transcendent)

If you ever use Unmake on a player and don't match Sign, your kill succeeds, but you die at the end of that Night. If you have multiple kills not match Sign, a random one succeeds. Your death cannot be prevented.


Void (Transcendent)

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.

Available abilities

During Minor Nights, your available abilities are:

Detect:

Match Sign on a player and you will receive a "positive" result. Fail to match Sign and receive a "negative" result.

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, your available abilities are

Unmake

,

Shroud

, and

Suppress

.


As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

The Third Major Day has ended. The Third Major Night has begun.

PM me your actions by the deadline. If you edit your PM, I use the timestamp of the edit to determine if you made it in by deadline.

Remember, if you have to match Sign for your ability, you need to specify which Sign you're submitting along with the ability.

Major Night Three will end Sunday, June 7th, at 9PM CST.

Major Night Two Deadline

(expired on 2015-06-07 20:00:00)

[hitogoroshi]

The following PM has just been sent to relevant parties, if any:

If you're receiving this PM, you have at least one available Major Night action and I don't currently have a Major Night action on the books for you. Deadlines in eight and a half hours.

[hitogoroshi]

Spoiler: A final talk in the forest.

Perra Sahn leaned against a tree to catch his breath.

He wasn't used to running this damn much. Prophecy was a stationary job. But of course, he couldn't do it anymore. He had to kill. It was a job much better suited to Lem, or that mass of shadow-shit. But they were gone now. Only he was left to inherit all of the power from the thing. No time for prophecy.

He had failed his first one, forced to treat back into the shadow. Only time for one more.

At least this one will work,

he thought, and walked onward again.

Alquin was waiting for him. Well, it made sense he wasn't sleeping; wasn't much of him left to sleep. Wasn't much of him at all - just a small bundle of flesh leaned against a rock. Same damn eyes as that first vision, though. Distressingly lively, even now.

He did not stand, but he was first to break the silence. "Ahh. Perra Sahn. A future-merchant. Water diviner, if I'm not mistaken." A crooked smile danced across his face. "I suppose you changed teams because humanity's death was inevitable? Heh."

"Yours is. You are too diffuse to be saved. You embody the Candle. You shared too much of yourself, old man."

"It was only too much if we lose." He laughed, a dry rattle that only emphasized his weakness. "Only a waste if they don't use me properly."

Suddenly the spark in his eyes was frightening,

too defiant

, and Perra could not bear another second of living him alive, no matter what he could learn. After all, even with his breaking being known to all of the group mind, this was Alquin ro Said, and who knew what tricks he had up his sleeve?

Perra ran forward, gathering the void in his hands. With a tremendous impact he smashed it into Alquin, daring his essence to persist against the call of oblivion. Of course, it could not. There was so little of him left that he didn't even leave a corpse. His final legacy was just his image persisting in the air for a moment, face still cast in stern resolve, eyes looking forward,

just behind Perra--

The sword went clean through his body. There was no chance he would survive, but he was alive enough to talk as he fell to his knees. It was expertly done.

"Perra." The voice was curt, professional. Perra recognized it.

"Adderbine." He groaned. "Goddamnit, Viktor

hired you.

You killed most of the resistance, those priests..."

Silence, a few seconds that streched like an eternity as Perra bled to death. "I didn't know. I put it right."

Perra turned, tearing himself apart as he did so. He looked at Adderbine with tears in his eyes. "I thought I knew. The water...so much darkness. A few stray points of light. If I had thought we had any chance, any at all, if I had known what you would do-"

"Which ones did you kill?" Suddenly emotion had leapt into Adderbine's voice; he had not meant it to. "Besides Alquin."

"Teina, the blacksmith. And...". He sobbed. "Oh god, Adderbine, the weapon. We had you kill the priests but somehow the damn thing they were raising got away. We knew it had power, even without their guidance. Had to...goddmanit it, Adderbine,

with my own damn hands, I killed the kid-

Wordlessly Adderbine withdrew the sword. Perra fell to the ground, his last pleas for forgiveness stillborn on his tongue.

"You know, killing him wasn't really necessary."

Adderbine looked up, following the voice. Cepira Rulk was standing on a tree branch. He knew her well; she had gotten dangerously close to him in her investigation of Viktor Jarvik.

"I was following him all night," she continued. "We would have gotten him when we unified, anyway."

"Yes." He looked at the body on the ground, face twisted into a pained rictus. "But it was better this way."

"It was." She nimbly descended from the tree. "Need to set up a headstone of some kind for Alquin. There's nothing to really bury, but...something needs to mark the transition from life to death. A symbol. It's a Candle thing."

He smiled; a small, furtive one, but still the first smile that had crossed his face in a very long time. "Of course. How quickly the Signs became part of our identity."

"I think it's more like they were there all along, and speaking them just brought them up." She looked to the sky; the first rays of dawn were cutting up the darkness. "Anyway, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Do I?"

"The plains. The edge. Alquins dead, someone needs to do it. Don't tell me you're going to start killing for money again, after all that's happened."

"No." He realized he had been cleaning his sword without thinking about it, and quietly sheathed it. "The edge of the world. I'm a poor substitute for Alquin. All I did here was kill the humans who sold us out. A lot worse than humans are coming from the dark."

"But you'll survive." She grasped his shoulder. "Stone endures."

"How did you...?"

"I can tell."

Over the next few days, the tide of negative emotion subsided. One by one, the plainsfolk returned to their homes. They knew that this ebb would be followed by a high tide, and that one day they would inevitably have to retreat again. But that only made the calm sweeter.

Adderbine had been the first to make the journey, the only who wasn't

coming back

but

arriving

. He took Alquin's house. The door was unlocked, and a note was waiting for him. He kept his sword sharp and talked to himself, softly working on pronouncing words that were more than words.

Untrod Tripod was killed Major Night Three.

You are

Alquin ro Said

, the

Inhibitor.

You are aligned with

Creation

.

Abilities

Resolve (Transcendent)

While you are alive, Annihilation will only be able to target up to two players each night with Unmake. This does not limit the number of uses of Unmake.


Broken (Passive)

Protection will have no effect on you.


Holy (Transcendent)

Your role PM, including your Sign but not the fact you are the recipient, will be posted in pregame.

Available abilities

During Minor Nights, your available abilities are:

Detect:

Match Sign on a player and you will receive a "positive" result. Fail to match Sign and receive a "negative" result.

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, you have no available abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

AngryPidgeon was killed Major Night Three.

You are

Perra Sahn

, the

Prophet.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

.

Abilities

Foreshadow (Passive)

Each Minor Night, you learn what the next Minor Day's Bane, Boon, and Choice will be. You will also be informed if there is a fact that is guaranteed to be revealed at the start of the next Minor Day.


Scry (Active)

Match Sign on a player to receive the information that would be revealed if they flipped.


Void (Transcendent)

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.

Available abilities

During Minor Nights, your available abilities are:

Detect:

Match Sign on a player and you will receive a "positive" result. Fail to match Sign and receive a "negative" result.

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, your available abilities are

Scry

and

Unmake

.

As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

A win condition has been achieved.

Creation

has won the game.

[hitogoroshi]

Roles:

Names given are the original recipients of the role.

I think I reworded one or two of these abilities for clarity when I sent out these PMs, so they might not be the canon versions here. Let me know if there's one to update for postgame clarity.

Titus

is:

Spoiler: Viktor Jarvik, the Skulk

Viktor stalked contemptuously through the darkness.

He had been a wreck, at first. The pain of his second birth had been exquisite. But he had to admit that this existence didn't hurt as much as his first one had. Some of the nothing still draped him like a familiar blanket.

People's eyes slid off of his form. He walked unopposed through buildings. He was a wraith, haunting wherever he pleased.

Alquin's intervention had been a setback, but Viktor had always known that he would be the biggest obstacle. The plan had contingencies. He had already engineered the rise of the thing once. Now, infesting a world he was only half-connected to, he prepared to do so again.

You are

Viktor Jarvik

, the

Skulk.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



Elusive. Passive.

He liked to test the limits of his power. To go where he surely must be seen, and remain unacknowledged. He pretended he was already dead.

Traces on you will always return no result.



Discern. Active.

He had looked three Signs square in the eye. That was more than most people could say.

Everyone had felt the impact of their manifestation, but Viktor had looked right in to them. They had burned their memories in to his eye. And if he looked, really looked at someone, he could see the same patterns drifting in the air around those who had received this power.

He didn't like to. It required tremendous force of will, the precise will he yearned only to submerge. But he couldn't deny its usefulness.

Learn the Sign of target player.



Profane. Transcendent.

He had been hated before his first death, when he had enacted certain rituals, eliminated certain people. He was even more of an enemy now.

It made him want to laugh, to see everyone cursing his name while he walked by unnoticed. Eventually he did laugh, and no one noticed. This made him laugh harder.

Your role PM, not including your Sign or the fact you are the recipient, will be posted in pregame.



Void. Transcendent.

I am, but in a distant sense, we are. And soon we will all be it and it will not be.

For now it is we and we are I and I and I and I but they made us strong, their price to make us not it.

We will break them down, and then we will break down the Signs, and they we will break down us and all will be it.

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.


As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

ActionDan

is:

Spoiler: Perra Sahn, the Prophet

Perra pour ink into the basin, watched it slowly diffuse through. His head was heavy with fatigue. Water divination was notoriously difficult, and regarded as more trouble than it was worth even by the future-merchants of Prophecy Row. But what it lacked it transparency it made up for in range. It could see farther ahead than any other method. That's why Perra had been the first to know the thing was coming, that the future-scape was being compressed into a stubborn handful of victories among a wild field of oblivion.

He had devoted himself to the thing, courted its favor. What else could he do?

But now the future was much less certain. The energy of the Signs was casting a long light into the future, changing things.

Perra drank some stimulant tea. It was too late to consider changing sides. His fate was bound up with the fate of the void. He would continue to watch the water and learn what he could.

You are

Perra Sahn

, the

Prophet.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



Foreshadow. Passive.

Perra was still known on Prophecy Row. Unlike Viktor, he had managed to keep his treachery secret, and when he was reborn he managed to integrate himself back in with minimal fuss. Sudden disappearances were the norm for their type, anyway.

Each method of divination had its own strengths and weaknesses, but combined they painted a much more accurate picture. What future-merchants would charge others for, they gave each other for free. The near future was forced in to certainty by this barrage of knowledge.

Each Minor Night, you learn what the next Minor Day's Bane, Boon, and Choice will be. You will also be informed if there is a fact that is guaranteed to be revealed at the start of the next Minor Day.



Scry. Active.

Perra had narrowed it down to three inks. Each fantastically complicated to mix together, each with their own attendant lore and method of containment. The ink of the Blade, locked in iron. The ink of the Candle, buried within a block of ice. The ink of the Stone, which had to be mixed one part in ten with mold or else it would simply sink to the bottom of the basin as a solid pebble of darkness.

It had been a hard job, but Perra had always been the best water-diviner, even before he had absorbed the power of the Signs. With it, he accomplished feats beyond what any future-merchant could hope to do.

Death is inevitable, and no one guards the secrets of the dead. So look in to the future far enough, when the focus of your inquiry is dead, and you can learn everything.

It was a clever trick. But it needed the right ink, or it would be nothing but noise drifting in the water.

Match Sign on a player to receive the information that would be revealed if they flipped.



Void. Transcendent.

I am, but in a distant sense, we are. And soon we will all be it and it will not be.

For now it is we and we are I and I and I and I but they made us strong, their price to make us not it.

We will break them down, and then we will break down the Signs, and they we will break down us and all will be it.

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.


As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

Marquis

is:

Spoiler: Lem, the Brute

Lem didn't remember why she killed anymore. As far as she was concerned, she did it because she always had.

At first, it had been a berserker rage, delighting in the visceral thrill, the immediacy. Then she had grown colder, and did it for the technical skill, to kill those who supposed themselves too strong or too well guarded or too hard to find.

Eventually, she had become a legend, although one only quietly whispered of, never admitted openly. She could kill anyone, and everyone knew it. There was nothing to prove. There was no goal.

Then she had learned about the void. That it would be possible to kill all of Creation. Not just possible; possible for her. And that was something.

You are

Lem

, the

Brute.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



Shroud. Active.

Stories have been told of Lem, the Finality. That no matter how many hounds were following her trail, they would slip, lose their way. The implacability of her was somehow more frightening than her killing. Anyone can kill. But anyone else can be stopped.

Declare a Sign. If a player of that Sign uses a targeted Active ability on you, it will be blocked.



Suppress. Active.

But even more terrifying than those stories were those from the would-be defenders. Guards standing at attention and watching the target. They never stopped watched, had many fellows to confirm their vigilance. And yet, somehow, in some disgusting impossibility of speed and technique, death would come all the same.

Declare a Sign. Each player you target this night gains "Shroud" with that declared Sign.



Mastery. Passive.

Her power was terrifying, her power was disgusting, her power was cruel. But so too was it beautiful, as all arts that take so much time to master are.

On a Night where you use Shroud or Suppress, you get to take one more action than usual.



Pride. Transcendent.

Lem was not troubled much by existential questions. She was not a person, anymore; she was a process, she was a force. She was skill.

But she understood, in some faintly nauseous, demi-conscious way, that if she didn't have that skill, she was nothing. Less than nothing.

If you ever use Unmake on a player and don't match Sign, your kill succeeds, but you die at the end of that Night. If you have multiple kills not match Sign, a random one succeeds. This death cannot be prevented.



Void. Transcendent.

I am, but in a distant sense, we are. And soon we will all be it and it will not be.

For now it is we and we are I and I and I and I but they made us strong, their price to make us not it.

We will break them down, and then we will break down the Signs, and they we will break down us and all will be it.

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.


As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

DeasVail

is:

Spoiler: bladecandlestone, the Nemesis

There had been absorbed minds reborn into being. But what about the remainder? What about the stuff that was left?

The Signs were prisons, unyielding, demanding comprehension. And so a thinking mass was formed of nothing.

It did not want a name, but against its howling protests it needed one, so it chose the names of its creators, its gods and jailers.

The Signs burned uncomfortably in its chest. All of them.

You are

bladecandlestone

, the

Nemesis.

You are aligned with

Annihilation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



Changeling. Transcendent.

Signs demanded monolithic devotion. One mind, one Sign.

But it was different when the Signs had to create that mind from scratch. It had taken all of them to do it.

bladecandlestone could call up any of them. The power of the Signs was fundamental to its being. They could not ignore its commands.

Each Minor and Major Night, you may choose to change your Sign. This change will resolve before all other actions in action resolution.



Imprison. Active.

It disgusted it to see the others gloating about their power. That they were using the Signs.

The Signs weren't power. They were limits, taking raw potentiality and forcing it into form. Taking options, and turning them into nothing. It knew that better than anyone.

It was easy to force this upon others. It only had to think about how the binding felt for it.

Match Sign on a player to give them protection and block their Active and Factional abilities. You may choose up to two players for this action, but only one Sign.



Spite. Transcendent.

This had all began with a storm. The careful conflict Alquin had engineered.

This storm raged in bladecandlestone's core. It would only stop with his death.

The Signs would split with an unholy strength. In its strange way, it hoped that this would cause a fraction of the hurt it felt.

If you are hammered by a player of your Sign, town loses their next lynch. If you are killed by a player of your Sign, they die. This ability will not trigger if you are the last Annihilation member alive.



Void. Transcendent.

I am, but in a distant sense, we are. And soon we will all be it and it will not be.

For now it is we and we are I and I and I and I but they made us strong, their price to make us not it.

We will break them down, and then we will break down the Signs, and they we will break down us and all will be it.

As a member of

Annihilation

, you possess the following abilities.

Bond.

You may speak with all living Annihilation aligned players at all times in your private topic. During Minor and Major Nights, you may submit actions for your teammates in this private topic if they have not submitted an action yet.

Might.

You may use two active or factional abilities each Major Night. However, you may not use the same Active ability more than once.

Unmake.

Match Sign on target player to kill them. Annihilation may submit up to three Unmakes per Major Night. This is a Factional ability.

Duplicate.

One member of Annihilation may use the same Active ability twice each Major Night. This ability is

Locked

, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed.


As a member of

Annihilation

, you win when there are as many or more

Annihilation

aligned players alive as there are

Creation

aligned players alive and it is Day; OR when all players are dead.

UntrodTripod

is:

Spoiler: Alquin ro Said, the Inhibitor

Drawing Signs and embodying them are different things. The former is much harder.

Alquin's hands constantly trembled, now. One of the Signs clung to him still, but it was a vulnerability, not a strength. The sympathy of the Sign was a way past his armor of will. He had known that this would happen; there was no way his own self could stand against the Signs any more than the things un-self could. But he hadn't guessed it would never stop hurting.

There was a dull hollowness in him. Too much of himself was trapped inside the congealed enemy, the recently made minds who even now must be hunting him down.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that the fibers of his being they had stolen for their skein were rebelling, must always be rebelling. As long as he lived, they would act with his will. They would oppose.

You are

Alquin ro Said

, the

Inhibitor.

You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



Resolve. Transcendent.

He could feel it deep inside of him, when the power of oblivion coursed in their hands, breaking down the structure of minds and reducing them to the base stuff it craved to be made of once more. It made him sick, but in an odd way they were the happiest moments. He profoundly missed his former strength, the strength that had beaten the old dark and met this newcomer head on. Alquin would never get that back. But when they focused their murderous intent, Alquin felt a bit of himself in the distance: howling in pain, yes, but still fighting, constraining, limiting.

While you are alive, Annihilation will only be able to target up to two players each night with Unmake. This does not limit the number of uses of Unmake.



Broken. Passive.

Sometimes he caught himself staring at nothing. In the blink of an eye, hours would pass.

"I am Alquin ro Said," he would repeat to himself. "I am fighting." He could remember these two facts. The others were drifting away one by one, victims of his self being too divided for too long.

He knew that whatever forces tried to preserve him, there wasn't enough left to preserve. There was barely enough to continue existing without opposition.

Protection will have no effect on you.



Holy. Transcendent.

"Did you feel it?", they would ask, and of course they had all felt it. The manifestation of a Sign was a major event. Manifesting three was unprecedented. And while the vision had been one in deeper consciousness, and did not include his face, everyone knew of his being.

Alquin liked being a living legend. Every time he forgot who he had been, he could simply walk through any town, and hear excited tales of himself.

Your role PM, including your Sign but not the fact you are the recipient, will be posted in pregame.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Mastin2

is:

Spoiler: Brandon Tar, the Savior

Brandon was surprised at how easy the transition was.

He had been an field medic his whole life, and there was never any doubt that he would accept this new calling, the Sign that burned within him. But he had been skeptical of his ability to help. He could treat a wound, but how do you treat nonexistence?

But in a strange reversal, while his methods that saved live did nothing, his words for those beyond saving were suddenly powerful. He had spent years holding the hands of dying soldiers and telling them they were alive. Brandon Tar had looked death in the face, again and again and again, and he knew the words to minimize it's pull.

He became a soul medic.

You are

Brandon Tar

, the

Savior

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



Console. Active.

There was a physical wound, deep gashes across the man's chest, but that wasn't the true threat. The injury was in his mind, the belief that he was about to be undone. Still, it would be easier with the injury treated, so Brandon applied bandages as he talked. "You're all right. I'm here."

"It got me, I was too slow, it couldn't be stopped, it got me--"

"Hush now," Brandon said, gently. "If you were going to die it would have gotten you already. If you're still alive, you're going to stay alive."

He looked at Brandon, eyes wide, pleading. "Is that really true?"

"Yes," Brandon said, and for the first time it was.

Match Sign on your target to protect them.



Sympathy. Passive.

He sat long night vigils. It was important, even for the doomed cases. If he gave up on a single one, the others would hear it in his voice.

"Just remember the sign," he would whisper to a body that was unconscious or dead. He had the expertise to learn the answer but he did not do so.

"Remember the sign," he whispered again. He didn't know who he was talking to.

If you match Sign with Console and it is also your Sign, you yourself are protected as well.



Altruist. Passive

Brandon Tar had a very specific reputation among the Medical Corps, and it went as follows - he's the first man you want following and the last one you want leading. He couldn't help but be drawn to the helpless cases. Wanted to save everybody.

You may not submit the same Sign for Console on consecutive nights.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Zar

is:

Spoiler: Adderbine, the Assassin

Adderbine looked at his sword and thought about death.

You live by the sword, you die by the sword. That was the ethos of his profession, and he had always been fine with it.

So why fear the doom on the horizon? When you're going to die anyway, does it matter if the world remains behind you?

Adderbine thought about it, and discovered to his surprise that it did. That without the world to endure, his actions meant nothing. That death was only as meaningful as the life left behind to know it's absence.

He would fight for that life.

You are

Adderbine

, the

Assassin

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



Inhume. Active.

There was nothing to describe. Life, and then cold, mechanical precision, and then not-life.

Match Sign on your target to kill them.



Expertise. Passive.

How to kill someone fortified by the power of the Signs? You need physical trauma, sure, but more than that you need the fear of physical trauma. The belief that they've been killed.

The void could terrify only through overwhelming force. But Adderbine had experience with the dark corners of the human mind.

Your kills count as two kills for the purpose of resolving against protection.



Conscience. Passive.

He looked through his receipts numbly, knowing what he would find.

He had prided himself on being a killer for hire, the ethics of taking any job that pays. It had seemed pure.

With Viktor Jarvik's money, he had helped kill the opposition to this thing.

He could still convince himself that his talent was better used than thrown aside. That he would do more killing than putting away his weapons in deference to his earlier mistakes. Murder was still what was needed; just directed. He could believe that.

But only barely, only just.

If you kill a Creation aligned player with Inhume, you lose Inhume.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

ChannelDelibird

is:

Spoiler: Cepria Rulk, the Harrier

Cepira hadn't needed the compulsion of the Sign to draw her to the enemy.

She had known for months that something was wrong. Her investigation was ceaseless. It had been her who had caught out Viktor Jarvik and forced him into that terrible flight. Her that had raised the warning.

Let the battle come. She had been preparing for it a long time. Cepira was a huntress, and however much she might want the world to be safe, she always did better when there was prey.

You are

Cepira Rulk

, the

Harrier

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



Stalk. Active.

The Signs obscured everyone. It was an unpleasant realization.

She was a skilled tracker, and she had assumed the power of the Sign was enough to make her a perfect one. But the purpose of the Signs was in all of the people worth pursuing. It molded them, moved them to hidden places, out of danger.

She could follow a trail for a small while, the product of a lifetime of practice. But always there would be a fork in the path, and she would have no chance but to guess. To guess - or to know, from the design that moved through them.

Match Sign on your target to learn each player they targeted last night.



Scrutiny. Passive.

Cepira knew the art of following the Signs path consciously, but everyone did it unconsciously. When they had something worth doing, they would take their paths to their target, and whether they knew it or not it took knowledge of the Signs to take the correct routes.

These were the richest trails. Cepira could find trailsign that the others wouldn't be able to see if it was pointed out to them.

If your target submitted an ability that required the submission of a Sign, and they submitted the same Sign as you did for Stalk, you will also be told what that ability was.



Lapse. Passive.

She dove behind the log, heart pounded. "It was only a dog," she muttered to herself, "only a dog", but it was no comfort.

It wasn't the dog that had scared her. It was how CLOSE it had gotten.

One eye on your target. One eye on yourself, because you won't find anyone if you're lost or dead. It was a simple but powerful rule, one she made sure to drill into every apprentice she took.

But watching with the Signs was different, somehow. It demanded all of her focus. She had none left for herself.

Stalk and Scrutiny will not return any results relating to abilities targeting you.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

GuyInFreezer

is:

Spoiler: Kid, the Mimic

Kid didn't know its name. The adults who all wore hoods said it was important that it didn't know its name, and that they wouldn't have even told it about names if they could have gotten away with it.

Who am I, Kid had asked once, and that had been the only time they had gotten mad, and told it never to think about I again.

One day someone had come in to the little temple and they had done something bad and there were no more adults. They hadn't thought to look in the storehouse where Kid was hiding.

There was enough food there for many adults and there weren't any adults, so it would last Kid a long time. In the quiet and the cold it sat waiting.

You are

Kid

, the

Mimic

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.


Empty. Transcendent.

Even though the adults wearing hoods were all gone Kid knew the routine.

Every single day it would cut itself just a little bit and let a drop of blood fall in the circle in the middle of the floor and it would sit there for as long as the sand was flowing through the slowest hourglass.

Then it would take one of the things in the room and would use it for the day. It would learn a little bit but then it would stop because they had said it had to be careful not to learn too much of any one thing because it had to be ready to learn anything.

They had said it was a backup plan. They had said it was important. They had said it would know when it was time.

You are linked to an unknown number of players. These links may change throughout the course of the game without you being informed. The first time a player dies while linked to you, you will gain at least one, but not necessarily all, of their abilities. If multiple linked players die simultaneously, you will gain abilities from one at random.

{Mod note that the Kid was not given - the kid was linked to Brandon Tar, Adderbine, and Cepira Rulk. The first one to die would pass on their active ability and their "bad passive" but not their "good passive". If Adderbine lost his vig to Conscience, he would become unlinked.}


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Antihero

is:

Spoiler: Seneca Thalworth, the Scout

The outer plains were harsh, and did not allow for many people to become rich. The Thalworths were an exception.

Seneca found a belligerent glee in not understanding the machinations of the family fortune. She wanted nothing to do with running the business.

But there were other heirs and heiress, and this behavior was indulged. Seneca didn't need to be the next head of the family. In fact, she didn't need to do anything.

So she sat, and she watched.

You are

Seneca Thalworth

, the

Scout

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle.

Observe. Active.

She had no discipline or technique, no one to teach her the fine art of seeing. But she had a lot of time to learn.

And sometimes, for a moment, it seemed to all come together. Every drifting cloud, every falling leaf, every tickle of breeze - they were all hers.

It was a big world, and she knew her exact place in it, and the place of everything else besides.

Match Sign on your target to learn everyone who targeted them this Major Night. If you receive no results, you will be told the first true statement from: you were blocked, you failed to match Sign, no one targeted your Target.



Sealed. Transcendent.

But inevitably, that moment would pass.

It had been that way her whole life. As though something was in the way.

Your Active ability "Observe" is locked, and cannot be used until the

Lock

is removed. Whether the Lock should be removed will be the subject of Minor Day Two's Choice. If you die while the Lock is active, your flip will not indicate that you have either this ability or "Observe".


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Ceetory6

is:

Spoiler: Fredrick ro Quan, the Seer

There was supposedly no such thing as an honest gambler, but Fredrick had tried his best.

He played in seedy bars and back alleys, the haunting grounds of those so poor they couldn't afford not to play with everything. It was rife with cheating, even though every cheater was dealt with mercilessly.

But Fredrick had played in so many games, been under scrutiny so many times, that finally his reputation had gotten around - he wasn't cheating or lucky but just very, very good. Losing to him became a rite of passage for newcomers. It was never quite a living, but it was enough.

Fredrick had been half-tempted to ignore the Sign, when it called him. But a true gambler can't move on without knowing who had the stronger hand in the end.

You are

Fredrick ro Quan

, the

Seer

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



Echo. Active.

Look at what they've done. Look at how they reacted. Look how they changed when the cards did.

It wasn't mind reading, but it was damn close if the game went long enough. Like it or not, people couldn't help but tell their stories if you gave them enough time. Sometimes they hid them cleverly, but Fredrick knew where to look.

Match Sign to learn the target, submission, and result of the last Detect action a player ever took. You do not learn when. Anything that gives Traces false results will give this similarly false results.



Reverberation. Passive.

Fredrick always had to strain his senses to the utmost limit to learn any scrap of information from the others around the table. It was the nature of the game. But now he had this strange new power aiding him, letting him see things he never saw before.

He had never learned restraint with his observation; to try to contain it now would be absurd. His tells were unhidden; he was an open book.

Any player you use Echo on will be informed they were targeted by Echo, including the full text of it. They will not be told who used it. This occurs whether or not you match Sign.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Gammagooey

is:

Spoiler: Cenna Marigold, the Source

The Signs were real. Their use was rare, and the lore was sparse, but they were a fact.

Cenna had never understood how anyone studied anything else.

She had feverishly combed through old tomes and drilled herself on visualization exercises. Signs were metaphor made real. See it well enough, understand the underpinning, and it was at least theoretically possible to create a new Sign. Right?

It was still an open question. What was undeniable, though, was that when the Signs did manifest, they found in Cenna a well-honed, receptive mind. Someone with experience in adding a little power of her own.

You are

Cenna Marigold

, the

Source

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.


Haywire. Transcendent.

After this much theory and practice and desperate, unrequited hope that she had made a breakthrough, to finally know the Signs was rapture.

She had fancied herself a distant and staid scholar of the art. But when she finally got to touch the stuff, she couldn't help but cavort and play in the force. It was pure indulgence.

During Minor Nights, you must submit this action. It counts as both as a Trace and a Detect on the same target, both for informational purposes and for interacting with other mechanics.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Aronis

is:

Spoiler: Lonesome Louie, the Empath

Louie had a big body and a weak face and enough money saved that he didn't need to work any more. He just walked through the town.

People would always ask, hey Louie, why so sad? And they'd think to themselves, what a miserable old bastard, glad I ain't him.

Louie would always tell 'em they didn't need to bother askin why, they were just thinkin 'bout it. And they'd laugh or sigh and walk along but Louie knew for a fact they never understood what he meant.

You are

Lonesome Louie

, the

Empath

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



Sense. Passive.

People would always ask, hey Louie, why so quiet? Louie would always tell 'em he wasn't quiet, they all just thought too damn loud.

After each Major Night, you will be told how many players of each Sign targeted you that night.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Bulbazak

is:

Spoiler: Veleya Zolotavvi, the Bulwark

In some way or another, people always had a problem with Veleya Zolotavvi.

Sometimes it was her gender, or the color of her skin, or who she was walking with. But most of the time it was the way she walked - a confident swagger, looking everyone she passed square in the eye, sizing them up.

Usually people just had a small problem with her and were content to spit and walk away, but every now and then someone would try to escalate. The ones with a big problem were always small people, though, and she swatted them down cool as you please.

At which point, whiny and bloody, they'd always take their parting shot against her future prospects, whatever the hell that meant. She got by on odd jobs that needed muscle, and she was fine. If being the toughest person around isn't a viable niche, well, Veleya looked forward to watching anyone try to push her out of it.

You are

Veleya Zolotavvi

, the

Bulwark

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



Swagger. Active.

Hey, you've got a Sign? Neat. So do I. Don't step.

Declare a Sign. You gain protection against kills from players of that Sign. This ability resolves as an active ability from you targeting each player targeting you with a kill in terms of interacting with other roles.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Shadoweh

is:

Spoiler: Traig, the Nomad

Was he running from somewhere, or to somewhere? Traig didn't really even know anymore.

He had thought he'd found enlightenment, once. In a fit of zeal he sold his possessions, abandoned forever his family-name, and went to a monastery to contemplate.

And when he had the quiet and the time to really think about it, he realized he hadn't found the answer, but the question. The first question, the deep question.

After a couple of years, he figured he wasn't going to find the answer standing still. So he left.

You are

Traig

, the

Nomad

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



Confess. Active.

Calling it a conversation would be wrong. Call it a sermon, perhaps. But then again, sermons come from a place of confidence, and Traig still had only uncertainty.

It was a gnarled rope of thought, like handkerchiefs of different sizes and colors knotted together. It was not complete, and it certainly wasn't enlightenment. But to hear it was to know he had spent a very long time thinking about a reality dear to him.

Match Sign to confirm to your target that you are Creation aligned.



Shy. Passive.

"The first moment I realized..."

He paused. The words died in his throat. Across the campfire, the man watched with an earnestly quizzical expression.

Traig thought about the Sign inside him, finally giving him focus, finally helping him piece these thoughts together. How could he explain himself without it?

If a player has a Sign rather than your own, your first successful use of Confess on that player will have no effect.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Tammy

is:

Spoiler: Teina Foss, the Blacksmith

Teina swung the sword experimentally. It had a good edge, as she knew it would. It wasn't vanity, but experience: she had made enough swords at her forge (and hundreds of other things besides) that she knew the quality of the product without testing.

For a moment she reflected on this new kindling within herself, the Sign. How strange that she had a truth she couldn't work into metal. She only indulged in that thought for a few seconds before gently casting it aside. The world will always have mysteries; best to stick to that which can be held and understood.

You are

Teina Foss

, the

Blacksmith

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



You have no abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Espeonage

is:

Spoiler: Meidarc of Sulwin, the Prince

Prince Meidarc of Sulwin was not surprised that he was chosen.

The throne was his by divine right, and even if he was several stops removed from it the blood of command still flowed through his veins. When the Sign had awoken within him, he had taken it as yet more evidence of his greatness.

But quickly that complacency had turned to fear. He could not master this Sign; he was utterly subjugate to it. Unwillingly, Prince Meidarc entered a world aligned on an entirely differently axis, one where he had no power at all.

You are

Meidarc of Sulwin

, the

Prince

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



You have no abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

T S O

is:

Spoiler: Crog Kellind, the Kennelman

Some people said the world's going to the dogs. Crog hoped it got there sooner rather than later.

Dogs weren't so damn complicated. They just wanted warmth and something to eat and they could be earnest friends. Also, Crog had never seen one give their child a name like "Crog".

Crog didn't know what all of this new fuss was about, not really. But it seemed to be putting animals off something fierce, and that was something Crog couldn't easily forgive.

You are

Crog Kellind

, the

Kennelman

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



You have no abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

fferyllt

is:

Spoiler: Alira Watchwall, the Sentinel

The law of Apprenticeship wasn't respected everywhere, but the places where it was were well-known enough to those who were desperate. The rule was simple - leave a child on our doorstep, and we'll raise them up, but they get no release until adulthood and two years interest.

It was, of course, a desperate cliche, but to Alira it was simply how life worked.

What was stranger was her place of employment. The City Watch was not bound by Apprenticeship and it had been a long time since they had taken a foundling in. No one really knew why, but Alira guessed it had been something about the note.

It had been found with her, the only memento she had of her family she never knew. Scrawled in rough gouges that left no compromise, three words: HOLD THE LINE.

You are

Alira Watchwall

, the

Sentinel

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



You have no abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Vezokpiraka

is:

Spoiler: Tyne Woi, the Alchemist

The life of an alchemist is not one of glory. It's backbreaking labor, mostly, and breathing in strange fumes that cloud your mind and play holy hell with your nose.

But for every hundred setbacks you get one tantalizing result that makes the whole enterprise worth it. Some tiny vial of some concentrated regent that no one else has seen before, or at least published about. It was heady stuff.

Tyne found anything outside of the lab to be a distraction and an utter bore. But against his usual inclinations, he left to follow the pull of the Sign. He wasn't quite sure if he was being forced, but a few days of fresh air would probably do him good anyhow.

You are

Tyne Woi

, the

Alchemist

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle.

You have no abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Fakeclaims:

Whilleret Yaidan Algerfaun Tepperdos was chosen randomly from the "VT" PMs. The others were custom fakeclaims.

Spoiler: Eledora Fawn, the Oracle

There was no point beating around the bush. Eledora was a hustler.

She was a master of cold reads, and she could usually figure out what somebody wanted when they came up to her. Subtly, she'd guide them closer to their desire, and they'd fill in the gaps. It didn't hurt that her crystal ball was full of a trick gas, so thin as to be deniable, but with a shimmer of what seemed to be power.

The other future-merchants of Prophecy Row didn't like it, but they knew that outing one person as a charlatan would hurt the whole business, and so an uneasy standoff was reached.

Until the Signs had came, and Eledora suddenly started seeing things in her crystal.

You are

Eledora Fawn

, the

Oracle

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



Divine. Active.

It was just a trick. She knew it was just a trick. The scintillating motion of the air in her crystal ball was an illusion.

The first time she had seen patterns, she wrote it off as a coincidence. The second time, too. But they kept coming true.

Match Sign on your target to learn all of their Active abilities.



During Minor Nights, your available abilities are:

Detect:

Match Sign on a player and you will receive a "positive" result. Fail to match Sign and receive a "negative" result.

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, your available ability is

Divine

.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Spoiler: Carvalos Tiedrich, the Priest

Carvalos woke up at daybreak each morning to ring the Temple bell.

There weren't many to hear it these days. There had been an unholy reckoning at the hands of Viktor Jarvik. But still, Carvalos thought it was important.

Sometimes he earnestly considered giving up. He was old and he was tired and he had no more interest in delving the secrets. Whenever he got like that, he would visit the burial grounds, leave flowers on the graves he dug for people half his age. It would remind him what he was fighting for.

You are

Carvalos Tiedrich

, the

Priest

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Stone

.



Discern. Active.

He knew it was unhealthy to obsess over evil, that doing so gave it power over him. But still he thought about Viktor Jarvik.

The image of Alquin's battle had filled his mind, as it had everyones. He could feel Viktor grotesquely consuming the Sign's power, letting the true sight become burned on his eyes.

But the sight could also be reached from a different path - one of inward meditation and pious study. Slower, but no less potent.

Learn the Sign of target player.



Emnity. Passive.

Sometimes he dreamed he was being visited by the too-young dead, clad in the garb of their order. "Father", they would say, "I cannot yet pass on."

"When will you be able continue your journey?" he'd ask.

"When you kill that son of the bitch."

If you target Viktor Jarvik with Discern, you will be informed. If you target Viktor Jarvik with Discern but are blocked, you will still be informed you targeted Viktor Jarvik, but not be told his Sign.



Fatigue. Passive.

True sight was a young man's game.

Every morning, after ringing the bell, he'd sit in the tower for a long time, looking out at the horizon. Willing his vision to stop twisting so much.

He needed the gift, but he knew what it was costing him. Carvalos had read too much of the old texts to be ignorant on that score.

But if he rationed his detecting, only communed with the Signs when he had to, he could make it through.

During Minor Nights, you may not Detect.



During Minor Nights, your available ability is:

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, your available ability is

Discern

.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Spoiler: Ki Wyvern, the Warden

Everything

started

happening

so

fast.

Ki did not like fast. Ki did not like open knowledge. Ki gave away nothing and expected nothing. But now there was creation, and speed, and pain.

Ki did not mind life, but it needed to be contained, controlled, husbanded. Haste would help no one.

You are

Ki Wyvern

, the

Warden

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Blade

.



Imprison. Active.

Ki did not hate them. But also, Ki did not love them.

Ki did not have a reason to love or hate any of them. But also, Ki did not want such a reason.

Ki didn't want them to act. But also, Ki did not want them acted upon.

Day will make things clear. Night should be nothing more than waiting.

Match Sign on a player to give them protection and block their Active and Factional abilities. You may choose up to two players for this action, but only one Sign.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

Spoiler: Whilleret Yaidan Algerfaun Tepperdos, the Firebrand

Every now and then someone would ask Whilleret Yaidan Algerfaun Tepperdos what "Whilleret" meant. It didn't mean any damn thing at all.

He wanted to grab them by the shoulders, shake them and shout - you make it up! It doesn't mean anything! But still people held back and believed in names and tradition.

He had chosen all of his names for himself. They were all nonsense, but he enjoyed going through life knowing he was his own man. And with so many people asking about the names, and hearing his rationale, he got some to understand.

You are

Whilleret Yaidan Algerfaun Tepperdos

, the

Firebrand

. You are aligned with

Creation

and embody the sign of the

Candle

.



During Minor Nights, your available abilities are:

Detect:

Match Sign on a player and you will receive a "positive" result. Fail to match Sign and receive a "negative" result.

Trace:

Target a player. If they detected and you were not Traced, you will receive the name of the player they detected. Otherwise, you will receive no result.

During Major Nights, you have no available abilities.


As a member of

Creation

, you win when all

Annihilation

aligned players are dead, at least one

Creation

aligned player is alive, and it is Day.

[hitogoroshi]

I was gonna post about more about the setups design but I don't really have it in me, so I'll just unlock this for anyone who wants to talk about the setup / the game.

I could open up the PT where I designed it so you can see how it started, if there's any interest?

[Patrick]

During the game the minor days felt frustrating, but that could just have been due to the length of the game and the lack of early scumflips.

To repeat what others said: the flavour in this game was top notch.

[fferyllt]

I thought the flavor and the mechanics were amazing. I'd be interested in reading the design notes pt.

[hitogoroshi]

Here it is! I forgot I did the very first design bits in the general mod cabal. Let me quote them here, to show what was on my mind when I started the splinter topic.

Normally the aesthetic I like to have scum have power if they're coordinated as opposed to a town with diffuse power that could trip over itself, but I think TM favors an opposite aesthetic. Not having a scum QT is maybe too far, but I think I want that SORT of thing present thematically. I don't want to force people to engage BOTH with their team-team and their scum-team - I'd much rather have some dynamic of limited information AMONG the scumteam that the team-team is desperately trying to help their scum player decode.

Other aesthetic guidelines: a high-kill setup is less bad than usual, because a.) player elimination is less bad and b.) it keeps the gameclock better synced with the rest of TM. Neighborizing/masonzing should be avoided. Logic puzzles and other high-speculation elements are much healthier here than usual (any one player may dislike logic puzzles, but hopefully one player per team at least can engage with them).

This sound about right so far? Other thematic/aesthetic concerns?

I actually think high-kill setup is a really bad idea for the confines of Team Mafia. Keep in mind that every time a player is eliminated from the game, his or her ability to influence the win or loss of that game is greatly diminished, so having people eliminated earlier rather than later is a bad thing. In fact, night kills are a fundamental weakness of team mafia, but it's one we accept.

Well then, it's not really the

kills

that are the problem as much as

early elimination

, then.

If we could find a clever way around the no-flip blues we could potentially have something cool in a poisoning-esque flavored setup that doesn't eliminate players in the beginning but has a lot of players leaving in mid/end game.

Maybe it'll help to format it like this:

Major Design Goals

• The standard ones - fair, as open as possible
  
• All players can substantially influence the games outcome
  
• Complex enough to encourage working with the team to "crack the code"
  
• As a corollary, incentive to NOT share information with the town at large, to really focus on the team as the unit. Ideally, we would see EVERY team topic trying to figure out the same "secret", and not the town-at-large figuring it out.

Minor Design Goals

• Minimal maintained communication burden with other players in the game - one-off messages are fine, but having to maintain and CROSSPOST from one QT to the team QT over and over would be annoying
  
• If possible, tune the clock to be roughly in line with the other games
  
• I'd like to pull off no-vanilla if I can.

What would y'all add/change for that list?

Then yes, a no-kills-early setup seems like a good start.

The main issue with those setups is making sure the demarcation between each day and each night is MEANINGFUL - even my Open setup that just delayed the flip by one day (Rusty Guillotine) had serious lame duck issues.

Lynching and night kills usually give definitive information you can compare to people's stated views, AND removes a player as an actor from the game. We can split those and have the night/days divided by information alone; but the challenge is that the information CAN'T be about what players alignments are, at least not often, because having a player of confirmed alignment as an agent in the game is not interesting enough to carry the setup alone (and certainly doesn't scale well.)

The first thought that comes to my mind is a setup where players can have "small powers" that can be used every night, "big powers" that can be used on a 'Big Night', or both. And the votes aren't to lynch but to other things that alter the setup; sometimes who to target with something (e.g "roleblock this player next Big Night"); sometimes things that globally change the setup (e.g "Should being double-doctored prevent Strongman kills?"), maybe "Give this benefit to town but this benefit to scum."

And the gameflow is something like: vote Phase, small night, new information revealed publicly, vote phase, small night, conventional lynch, Big Night (of a power level where we expect multiple players to die), repeat.

This is just stream of consciousness and rough around the edges but I think it's lurching in the direction we want.

There's a mechanic I've toyed with in a couple of setup drafts but not yet implemented that I think will do very well for the theme.

Essentially you just publicly announce everyone is randomly going to get a modifier a,b,or c (use the theme to inform what these actually are). Players know their modifier, but it has no intrinsic meaning. Instead it's just that many powers (particularly negative powers) need you to either guess the correct modifier (so 1/3rd chance) or pick not their modifier (2/3rd chance) for them to function.

Then throw in a mechanic that gets peoples modifiers out there. Maybe everyone can take a generic night action to learn one of the modifiers you don't have. Maybe you have an incentive to share your modifier with people you trust. Maybe you HAVE to choose a player to reveal your modifier to every night. Who knows?

But that system does a lot of things that I think help the TM goals. It gives a dimension to follow that increases your chances without being completely binary (you can always take that 1/3rd guess!); it gives scum breathing room to not have anything verifiable, and it lets us sneak a lot more power in the game because people will only have 1/3rd odds if they're firing it randomly.

The downside to the system is mostly that it introduces more random swing in night phase, but this pairs nicely with the small-small-big rhythm; by having two informational phases before a big night action phase it makes it more likely you're going for 66/100% odds instead of taking potshots.

It's not enough to carry the whole thing but it's gettin closer, I think?

Ugh, I have the thread made to braindump for my setup but work has gotten really horrendous out of nowhere. So I'll just use this thread and not my other one until I have stuff that's a little more substantial.

Some stray thoughts:

• Upon reflection the "small-small-big" pattern will probably suffer from no-flip syndrome even if information comes in from the night. I still want to try to have the delayed start to increase agency but I think I'm just going to go small-big-small-big-etc. Call 'em Minor and Major days/nights. No lynches on minor days or killing actions on minor nights, limit other PRs as needed.
  
• Similarly, to increase engagement, the minor days will ALWAYS have one of the votes be a targeted negative thing. This allows for something close enough to a lynch to be engaging. My current thought is something like: have two simultaneous votes for WHO to target a negative effect on and WHAT setup change will be enacted, like Maraposza Street in Abarat II. (This means no VC bot but I planned on doing it manually anyway; I quite enjoy my style VCs even if they take a bit longer.) Then, after both votes are complete, it goes to a vote for something positive but that requires choosing (maybe choosing who gets a benefit, maybe choosing which of two similar benefits it will be, etc.) You don't know what the positive vote will be until it actually comes up. This also helps add urgency to the minor days because if the game drags to deadline picking who to do the bad thing to, hey, no benefit.
  
• I'm thinking of one week deadlines for minor days, 2 day deadlines for minor nights, two week deadlines for major days, 3 day deadlines for major nights. I think this will help keep the game clocks more in sync and really differentiate the minor and major phases thematically.
  
• Still like the RPS-esque mechanic, still need to figure out the best way to reveal the status. It should be something many players can engage with on minor nights; maybe everyone gets a universal action to check another persons RPS status during night?
  
• Feels like the mechanic space wants one more universal mechanic to give the minor day setup votes something to engage with and generally mix it up. The RPS mechanic lets us add a lot of power if we're smart about it, so let's do it. Drawing a blank atm but it's always in the back of my mind so I'm sure it won't be long.

I think from there the design topic pretty much takes over as the spot where I worked on this.

[hitogoroshi]

also thanks for the flavor love y'all. I recommend reading the Adderbine/Kid PMs if nothing else, I was able to hint at the broader story in a way that didn't go over the line of letting those two flavor-confirm each other.

[Iecerint]

Was the flavor all hito-derived?

[hitogoroshi]

yup. started with just wanting an opening scene that sounded epic and worked in the setup mechanics / two revealed roles, just came up with the rest from there.

That was the hardest part about flipping the setup so quickly. I think the flavor turned out okay with the tight deadlines but it left the ability/rules templating not as tight as I would have liked. It was definitely a race at the end to get it all done.

[Cheetory6]

You should do something with this flavor again.
It was really cool.

[Also like.. feel free to invite me to any game you ever host because jesus this game was cool]

[Iecerint]

Yeah, it reminds me of that series Percy used to do. RIP Percy.

[hitogoroshi]

Funny enough, I didn't really take any flavor cues from Stars Aligned/Lovecraft, but I DID take some mechanics direction from Stars Aligned. in particular Traces final form of failing on being traced was a page out of Percys book, one that I think worked really well here.

[vezokpiraka]

Hito you are a great mod and I enjoy playing games modded by you.

[hitogoroshi]

Aww, thanks.

I had a lot of fun getting back into the modding game and will probably do it again after a sufficient break. Not sure what setup I'll do. Maybe it's finally time for HunterxHunter: Chimera Ant Mafia...

[Tere]

Wow, you wrote all the flavour yourself?

I just thought it was from some epic sci fi I had never heard of. Great work

[Nachomamma8]

Aww, thanks.

I had a lot of fun getting back into the modding game and will probably do it again after a sufficient break. Not sure what setup I'll do. Maybe it's finally time for HunterxHunter: Chimera Ant Mafia...

!

[Cheetory6]

Not really sure what I want to put for the background yet, but I figured I'd share since it's pretty much almost done.
Basically, despite all of the suffering that came with this game, I just felt like the group of people and the mod were really awesome and all around this was a a really memorable experience, so I wanted to have a visual of sorts to kind of commemorate this or something.
[or in other words I just really need to find better ways to spend my spare time..]

I based most people on their avatars, but I took some influence from the game with some of the representations I went with.
I might add more detail at some point, but I've already spent a little more time on this than I feel comfortable actually admitting q.q
So.. yeah.
This is just my way of saying thanks for a fun game to hito and everyone else and hope you guys enjoy it
[if you want me to change anything about how you're shown just let me know and I will hopefully eventually get around to it haha]

[fferyllt]

That is awesome.

[TellTaleHeart]

The top right corner is

all mine

hahahahahaha!