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Old 06-09-2005, 09:22 AM   #273
Fordim Hedgethistle
Gibbering Gibbet
 
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Beyond cloud nine
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Fordim Hedgethistle has been trapped in the Barrow!
Oh dear…why do I think that I may be one of the names on Saucy’s secret list…?

All right, so we’ve lynched another innocent. I wish we hadn’t but I still think that The Phantom was a better choice than The Saucepan Man insofar as we will have the benefit of his more penetrating (and understandable) posts as we close in on the wolves. Because all evidence to the contrary I do believe that we can begin to close in on the fiends, finally.

It’s become clear to me, at least, that there are currently two kinds of people in the village: the verbose and the quiet. In the verbose camp we have myself, Sauce, Estel, mormegil, and Kuruharan. I daresay that at the moment, these are also the people who are drawing, and who will draw, the most suspicion. In the quiet camp we have Holbytlass, Oddwen, Shelob and Azaelia. These villagers are coming under the least suspicion. (I would have put Firefoot in this list but with her gone she is no longer on any list but that of brave innocents.)

Now, the first thing I’d like to point out about these lists is that they represent a gender split: talkative, blabbing, blathering and loudmouthed men on the one side, and more guarded, careful, thoughtful women on the other. The second thing I’d like to say is that men, I think we’re in a lot of trouble…

Here’s my theory…

If I were a wolf, I would be faced with two options in the early rounds of voting: speak out vocally and try to get an innocent hanged or duck for cover and wait for the villagers to lynch one another. To this point, I had no way of assessing which strategy might be the one adopted by the current crop of wolves, but after yesterday’s fireworks I think that we have some fuzzy beasts of the more quiet variety. Not only did we kill the most verbose and outspoken member of the loudmouthed male camp only to discover that he was an innocent, but the other members of that club worked very very hard to try and get other members of that camp strung up. Seems to me that if there is more than one wolf in this group, this is a very foolish way to behave. While this was going on, the quieter, more thoughtful (and more feminine) members of the village did what they had been doing all along and sat back while the men tore at one another. To be sure, they did vote, but they were not really active in the debate – nor did they need to be, what with the loudmouths doing such a good job of stringing up yet another innocent.

So my attention is now firmly shifting to those other members of the village. In particular I’m taking a much closer look at their voting records….

Holbytlass, Oddwen and Shelob have spread their votes around. In the first two rounds they never voted for the same name: only in the third round did both did Oddwen and Holbytlass vote together, and this time against Saucy – this seems suspicious to me, as it would appear that they wanted to keep TP around: which makes sense as he was one of the loudest mouths and was haranguing everyone with his theories in which the wolves were other loudmouths. In all three rounds the only one of these three to cast a vote against another was [b]Oddwen[b] against Holbytlass. As that is the only vote Holby has ever received, and no-one has really argued terribly hotly for her to be hanged, that would not really be a dangerous thing to do. Particularly in the second round when the loudmouths (myself included) really took charge and began going after one another.

More evidence against them: Firefoot is dead – she was the logical choice for this group to pick and believe me or not but I had decided that if she were the one to go, I would be convinced that my theory is correct. She had the least suspicion against her, but she was voting with the loudmouths on each round (against me in the first round, Sono in the second and TP in the third). Killing her is a good way of getting rid of an innocent without tipping their hands (paws) insofar as she has never accused them so it would not look like retribution. More importantly it allows them to keep the real loudmouths alive. If I were a smart, quiet, wolf, I would never want to see Kuru, SpM, TORE or me dead, insofar as they are doing a very good job of killing off each other and giving me a free ride. I would have learned from Azaeilia’s example that one can be utterly invisible and survive quite nicely.

My final piece of evidence is the attempt to frame me with the first werewolf killing. That was obviously designed to get the loudmouths going against one another. TGWBS and I were probably the two most vocal, and the other loudmouths soon joined in. The frame-up was never meant to work, insofar as getting me hanged, it was just meant to stir the pot. And stir it did.

So the obvious question is: how can I explain this sudden turn in my thinking? To this point I’ve been gunning for loudmouths myself and here I am now, suddenly making a wolfish-looking switch. I can only say that while I had my suspicions of this yesterday, I did not have nearly as much reason to follow those as I did my arguments against TP. But three things happened to convince me that I’ve been wrong all along:

1) TP was innocent

2) The loudmouths spent all their energy accusing each other; a stupid thing for werewolves to do

3) Firefoot was killed

I did not want to float this theory yesterday as it is based on the theory that the wolves are hiding: to let them know that I was looking at them before I was sure of who they were would have been foolish.

So that’s were I am at now. And this time, Kuru, I am willing to be as certain as you would like in my assertions. At least two of Oddwen, Holbytlass and Shelob are wolves. For my money, the best bets are Oddwen and Holbytlass.
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