T-I-G CIV: Spambot Apocalypse (Game Thread)
 

"How much longer, Nerwen?" The speaker, a mesh of light woven into human form, stared anxiously down the long corridor.

Her companion was working at a panel set into the wall; under her fingers glowing arrays of numbers shifted into new configurations.

"Nearly there… I think… just got to give them their activation codes…"

Mostly, the two flickering, light-traced figures resembled women, one tall, one shorter, but sometimes they dissolved altogether into points like swarms of fireflies, re-forming into other shapes: a female Elf; a Sphinx. Before and behind them, lines of light formed a grid of interlocking paths, stretching into the far distance.

Not that there was any real distance here. Not that anything was real here at all.

"…And we're done. Three AIs, re-programmed to help our friends."

"Will this work?

"Should. Though I'd have liked more time to de-bug H.U.N.T.E.R; still, can't be helped. Now for the main course. You've got Cop and Lommy's data, Agan?"

"Here," Aganzir passed her a disc, which, like everything else in this non-place was formed of lines and specks of light. "I'm sure they got closer to the Interface than anyone yet, before that… that *thing* got them."

"The Adult Friend Finder," said Nerwen with a shudder, as she pressed the disc to the panel, which seemed to absorb it. "What a way to go. Let's hope it wasn't in vai–" She gasped, as the screen changed again, showing a maze, a single, twisting line of red highlighting a pathway.

"Agan! Look! It's the way out!"

"Wait. Did you hear that?"

"What?"

Then Nerwen heard it too: a low droning and clicking, rapidly approaching from both directions.

The two Downers stared at each other. They had no words.

The things that came into sight from the nearest side-passages were something like spiders; spiders as they might be conceived by an infinitely mad, infinitely vicious machine. In this place where all was made of light, they were darkness, absence, except for the evil glow of the clustered eyes they turned on their prey.

For a long moment, hunters and quarry stared at each other, unmoving. Then the creatures scuttled forward, belching out clouds of what looked like black smoke. When this reached Nerwen and Aganzir their digital forms had an instant to contort in agony before they dissolved into meaningless flecks of electronic noise. Then there was nothing.



In the real world, in intensive-care wards thousands of miles apart, the jagged lines tracing the vital signs of two women in unexplained comas suddenly went flat.


Living:
Inziladun
Galadriel55
Sally
Legate
Rune
Kitanna
Boromir88
Blind Guardian
Loslote
Morsul the Dark
Shasta


Dead
Coppermirror, Lommy– seized by Adult Friend Finder.
Nerwen, Aganzir– poisoned by webcrawlers.



Night One has begun.
Rôles will be sent out during the Night. If you don’t get one, you’re an ordo.

The spider-like programs met at the place where their victims had stood. Their jaws opened and closed, as if they were frustrated to find nothing substantial to bite.

“humans tricky," said one, red eye-lights smouldering. "try to leave. tom angry."

"Dammit, I'm mad!" This one's eyes shone a baleful electric blue. "Never odd or even!"

Something, they agreed, must be done, for the sake of their glorious cyber-paradise. Or, as the blue-eyed spider-bot put it,
"Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?”



When not occupied in amusing their spambot masters, the captured Downers were kept in digital holding cells. Discouraged, helpless, those unlucky enough to be singled out had no defence when the spider-droids burst into their cells and sunk their fangs into their virtual forms. As before, the human shapes disintegrated– but this time, their glow remained, spreading into the fangs of their attackers, and from there over their entire arachnoidal bodies, as though the spiderbots were sucking up the very life-force of their victims.

In a sense this was true. A moment later the vast many-legged shapes wavered, collapsed and re-assembled themselves into the images of the Downers whose essential data they had absorbed.



As the slaves filed out of their cells for their first "day" of electronic toil, most failed to notice anything odd about their companions. They were, after all, both fearful and disoriented– not to mention depressed to find even more of their friends had been captured than they had realised. At least, many people had an idea there were two or three extra faces in their group. But that was too upsetting to think about very much.

Only the Hacker took note of the rather curious exchange between the slaves marching behind him.

"extra slaves not slaves. extra slaves bots. bad bots. bad bots help humans. tom not like bad bots."

"Tom! Speak like a human, or you won't fool them for a microcycle! You've got the programming for it now. Do you hear me talking in palindromes any more?"

"Sorry, Lucy, tom do best– er, I mean, I'll do my best…"

"Well, well!" said the Hacker to himself. He glanced over his shoulder, but the speakers had already turned into another passage. “Now, they sound like my kind of "people". If only I could let them know…"



Day One has begun. You may post.

Living:
Inziladun
Galadriel55
Sally
Legate
Rune
Kitanna
Boromir88
Blind Guardian
Loslote
Morsul the Dark
Shasta


Dead
Coppermirror, Lommy– seized by Adult Friend Finder.
Nerwen, Aganzir– poisoned by webcrawlers.

All right. It's been too long since the paths of Matrix, ee, I mean, you know, have brought me into such a, hmm, "electronic village", and despite the grave situation of the spambot invasion (though so far I haven't been redirected to the Adult Friend Finder from this thread, at least), I am happy to be here.

Introductions aside, looks like we have quite a bit of work on our hands. Just for clarification, maybe our dead Moddess program can confirm just for general knowledge that we really have all the roles that are mentioned on the admin thread? And also the number of the Spambots? In any case that leaves rather packed village (or, however it should be called... "server") in terms of most of the roles being special. I guess we can just expect a bloodbath.

So, effectively - even though there isn't really much to start with at this point... well, I'm just looking forward to read everyone's posts. To finish the way I started, it's been too long...

Remember, it’s only digital blood.

And yes, we do have all the roles. I am not going to tell you how many bots there are, however. So there.:p

Robocop
 

Adult Friend Finder, was there ever a more devilish foe? I doubt it, for aren't we all here in an attempt to find friends and likeminded people?

Anyways, we are not many left here, the number of casualties are worrying. We will need to be swift and efficient.

So let me start of with the first raised eyebrow (it probably does not qualify as an acusation):

Clarification is nice, but not something we should deal with here, and it these sort of request that can easily be used as a smokescreen.

Oh my. And here I thought the cyberworld meant we were safe from bloodbaths...er pixel baths?

This is an unfortunate event and I'm going to blame Sally, because I always blame Sally. :p

So we're in cyberspace, huh? Well, at least it's not Pinterest.

Thing is, I doubt there are really many "adults" there. Maturity is much more prevalent in our beloved Downs.

A spambot might consider openly questioning the number of its kind, certainly. So might the innocent, though. At any rate, it's rather vexing to not know what we're facing. I guess I'll go on the assumption that there are three 'bots. Since there are only 11 players, and there's a Hacker to assist them, that would seem reasonable.

Not feeling well actually left work early, so day one will be slim for me. Rune already tossing up a slight suspicion on Legate, Can't say much about it since he didn't say "Legate is a bot" But setting someone up early for a lynch would be a pretty good strategy especially if done so subtly.

I am a wolf.

If we can believe the narrations, there's a TomBot and a LucyBot, meaning there's two bad guys. However, we have a fair amount of people, so I wonder if we couldn't expect three? I'm inclined to think, with eleven people, three baddies might be a bit harsh (they'd only have to survive two lynches), so I'm going to operate, at least for now, on the assumption that we have two baddies.

The above is assuming the R.A.N.G.E.R. misses all protections, though. :rolleyes:

Good enough for me!

++Galad......

Nah.

Let's hope for better luck than that.
We don't know the number of the bots, but it's really not that important. Concentrate on getting one at a time and go from there.

Probably? Accusation? Raised eyebrow is enough; that whole (explanation) wasn't really necessary. Then, Probably? As in, allowing for a possibility that this can go as an accusation? Or that you don't know? And, if it goes as an accusation, it's the worst one I've seen in all my games. Already on defense without any attack? ;) Hmm.

Agreed about the potential smokescreen, though it's a double-sided very flimsy thing and can't be looked on as definite, but why not here? Clarifications are done over game threads all the time. I don't get the issue. Mind explaining? :confused:

Myself, I'd go with the whole 3. I hope for 2, but I don't expect it to happen, to avoid a bot you never thought existed biting your head off. :smokin:

I'd rather we have wolves. Spambots are nasty business. Years I've spent honing my wolf lynching skills, only to now have spammers. How do you even begin finding the bots?

But are you A spambot?

Iff we think there are 3 and a hacker then there's nearly half chance of getting someone bad.

Inzil is right though let's just concentrate on getting them instead of worrying about the number; Lest we get sidetracked by the "how man6" conversation.

go to this site its great for finding bots the best out there completely free I used to be for flip-flopping. Now I'm against it if he's innocent his famous clairvoyant powers must be taking the week off. Meanwhile, the Night-kills have been awfully effective only 2.99 if you buy today

Wow awful quiet here....

Looking at people who've posted today....

Rune and Shasta only two so far raising any flags but both these are based on uber flimsy(even for me) logic of Rune trying to toss suspicion on legate and Shasta working with the idea of two spammies because it could lull innocents into a sense of security.

Again working with day one page one logic... So unless something more concrete comes up Yeah I might abstain for day one.

Though we could take G55's "I'm a wolf" comment at face value like hahaha see a wolf wouldn't actually say that.

Anyway back to the wind rustling in the cyber trees.

Highly doubtful a bot would say that, unless they wanted to give the seer a good target. G55 is up to something though, it seems.

Just watch me. :D Next time I'm a wolf I will reveal myself and maybe even my mates in the first post. Mark these words, you have it coming. What you won't know is if I'm actually a wolf or just messing with your head. :p

I was bored of making joke suspicion lists. This is much more interesting. And I'm definitely up to something. *licks cyberchops*



That aside, if you two are still around now I don't mind a cyber chat... Let me just go find something to say.

For lack of anything better, I'll scrunitize the reactions to my first post. Might as well, right? Everyone else is welcome to do one parallel to mine, and then we can compare. Makes for a good starting point.

Well, there are two ways to find out. ;)

This reaction is interesting. The last sentence is conceivably a Hacker giving the bots a nod across a crowded room. I'd think Boro would be more subtle than that, but such hinting is difficult to achieve and dangerous to attempt.

This is in chronological order. Warning: the quotes are taken out of context to keep it brief.

Shasta ignores it.


So, what can I conclude? In reality, nothing, since this is too much in the field of banter and too far from the real stuff. Now that I've started this analysis, I don't actually want to do it. Bugger. Anything that can be gleamed is soooo grasping straws. But it could make a starting point for a discussion, so for argument's sake and not for the sake of suspicion.

Shasta's response, or, rather, lack of such, is either perfectly normal ("this is silly banter, I'm not taking part in it") or perfectly suspicious ("voicing my thoughts on this matter is dangerous as it could give away some true feelings, so silence is best"). Or maybe he just shrugged the whole thing off as a joke and didn't bother joking back. Who knows.

Inziladun and Boro take it as a joke, but in different ways. Inzil goes for the content, Boro for the wording. Morsul echoes Boro in this sense, but he doesn't mention his prior wolf hunting skills that Boro laments about. No joke comparison to the other enemy. Morsul has a good point later, because I would totally do that as a wolf, despite what Inzil replies to that. Also, after Morsul proposes a literal, face-value meaning, Zil goes to say that I'm "up to something". Ah, so it's not plain banter anymore. Interesting turn.



Ok, I'm done. It's something from nothing, though admittedly not much of a something. Go on, discuss.

EDIT: xed with 2 Zils.

Well, one is to lynch me and find out my role. What's the other? Let me live and see what happens? I don't get it. Oh well. I'll just have to wait for that futuristic game to find out what you'll really do. :cool:

Indeed you have one out of two. Guess you will have to wait on the other.

Hey, last game I played in the cobbler inserted the phrase similar to "I'm a cobbler! Don't kill me!" into his post and just masked it in the context. With a cobbler, go figure what's a hint and what is simple conversation. On the bright side, the wolves have no advantage over the innocents in this, so everyone is on even ground when looking at a potential cobbler/hacker hint.

Oh, having a Seer dream me? :rolleyes:

Like I said, it's a fine line and difficult to discern, but any comment of that sort bears a look.

Bizarre behavior can certainly catch a Seer's attention, I would say.

Can't disagree with that, but still planning to do it. :D

Almost panicked deadline is at noon gmt? Or Midnight GMT... or to make it easier it's in about 13 hours not 1 right?


anywho. Lots of people haven't posted yet.

G55 good summary, like you said not much, but hey it's something. Zil did mention you might be up to something, but it feels more like confusion than suspicion.

Zil, maybe I'm not seeing what you see... What part of Boro's post could be a hacker hint? Feels like all banter to me.

Never stopped me from playing weird and confusingly, can I get an amen?

A little over 13 hours, yes.

It could have been just banter, but what I meant was this:

Nothing concrete, just something to keep in mind.

x/d with Morsul

I'll send it to you all wrapped up nicely, in a purple box with a green ribbon around it. And polkadots. :D

My sincere apologies. For some reason I thought we were starting tomorrow. But I'm here now, so never fear!

Actually, do fear. Fear much. Even in my attempt to reach this discussion, *they* tried to harm me. I escaped, narrowly, and shall be scarred for hours at the pictures I saw. We must be vigilant, my fellow Downers, lest they fool us into thinking they are like us. With leaders such as tomtom and lucyyenic, we must constantly be on guard, or they, my friends, will turn this site into naught but a Tolkien dating service.


....Has anyone heard from Nienna or Formendacil lately? Perhaps we should check on them. :o

I've missed you too, princess. :smokin:

But is this something a Botanna would say to make me think she is the real Kit? Maybe we should lynch her just to be safe. ;)

So, out of what's been posted so far... though first, let me remind that it'd be still really good to see the rest of the village post... (with the hope that they didn't forget about the Day 1 altogether, which isn't sadly that unlikely...)

Main impressions about people about whom I actually feel I can say something about (about the rest, it's too vague):

Morsul - I think he's being his normal, slightly unreliable, but genuine self. Therefore, feeling like okay and letting him go at least for now.

Galadriel55 - somewhat looking like a Cobbler (Hacker, or however it would be). Seriously, too much random chatter with the sort of misguided happy "oh sure, the Seer can look at me" stuff. Flashes warning, but more like on the Cobblery side. Trying to interact with people and to get the Wolves' attention, perhaps?

I was also thinking that based on the narration, it seems like two bots. Which would make sense, since they have the Hacker. It's quite a lot of people. Of course, the good side has three folks on their side as well, but H.U.N.T.E.R. is somewhat unreliable, possibly similarly to how the Hacker is for the Spambots. In any case, it's true the numbers really aren't our issue, it would be just good to know what's the status, but in either case the point is of course the issue of catching spambots, however many of them are there - when it's finished, we'll know.

This is the example of the Cobbler-y behavior (from G55) I was talking about. Hard to tell how "realistically" interpret it, but still, with the little we have, I find it disturbing. It looks like trying to get the Spambots' attention. Well.

More later... hopefully, when there's more for people.

EDIT: x-ed with Sally (twice)

Just thought though what if Shasta wrote it off as banter because he knows for a fact it was, IE he's a spammie?

...You know Zil and I were discussing a game that didn't happen yet, right?

Not exactly what I was thinking. It was banter for a fact regardless of anyone's role. And, while of course he could be a bot, he could also not be a bot. This is very inconclusive.

Okay, in fact, I did not get it. My bad. It was with the context of the rest of the posts, or in fact, especially the self-confession and such, that it looked really wrong. But now upon re-reading your posts, they look rather normal. Okay. Well, back to the evaluation. Where are the rest of the people, anyway? Well, there's still like half a day, right?

Obligatory
 

Just a short remarc from me before i sign off...

So Galadriel is stealing the thunder, this kind of behaviour is infuriating. It can at times be helpful, but mostly it just results in confusion that bots/wolves can hide in.

My guess is that people don't want to vote for an active person on day one, and under any circumstances it would be wise to look furter than Galadriel.

Despite Legate's remarc earlier he seem relatively harmless, or rather he does not seem overly suspicious.

Weather or not Morsul is his usual self, I cannot judge. Very active, but nothing special. Probably just a result of this being day 1.

I want to say something about Boromir as well, but I cannot.

See ya.