[the phantom]

So, Firefoot was the Hunter, eh? I'm sooooo glad you didn't come forward and argue with me when I claimed to be the Hunter. When I considered the type of people populating the village, I thought the odds of the Hunter keeping their mouth shut were pretty good, and I'm glad I wasn't wrong about that.

Right after I said I was the Hunter, Roa said this-

Thanks for your help, phantom, and good luck. Three gifteds in three nights... oh dear... Just be wary of crafty birds.

I was on the lookout for reactions from people, trying to see if someone struck me as the true Hunter. For some reason this statement caught my eye. It was like Roa was trying to enforce that I was gifted, and the "oh dear" comment was like a smirking "oh dear *snigger*, we're about to lose our fake Hunter".

It's obvious now that the comment wasn't written with that intent, but that's how part of me was trying to read it. My overworked, sleepy brain.

But then I started to believe that Valier was the Hunter. If you remember, on day 3 I eased my suspicions of her and took her off my lynch list (which was three people, two of them were Penguins! go me! ha ha!) Val's behavior seemed to indicate she didn't fear death too much, and her single-minded attack on Ang made me think even more that she was innocent. The particular frustration she seemed to have with me- I thought maybe it stemmed from the fact that SHE was the very Hunter I was trying to help and yet I was giving her a hard time.

Once I started thinking that she might be the Hunter, I decided I would keep her under the gun and bet that the Penguin wouldn't kill her that night, but at the same time I didn't keep her under the gun to the extent that I actually started a crusade to lynch her. I wasn't going to let that happen, despite my threats.

And if I waffled on my threats, I knew no one could possibly accuse me of anything, because I was a proven innocent. As a proven I pretty much had a permit to do anything I pleased.

Thanks for the dream, Lalaith.

Despite believing that she might not be the Hunter after all, I still thought Roa was innocent. Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone did. I say "unfortunately", because Penguins kill people who are too innocent. I thought Roa was the likely Penguin choice for the next night, so I didn't place Roa as my least suspicious person. Instead I put Spawn there, and tried to make Spawn look completely innocent.

I picked Spawn because I thought she would be a good Penguin kill (yes, Spawn, I was trying to set you up for death- sorry). I was pretty confident of Spawn's innocence (I've been a Wolf with her before, and that helped my thinking), and I was also pretty confident she was not the Hunter. I've played with her enough to know a bit about how she acts, and I was fairly confident that a Hunter-Spawn would find a way to hint me.

So, since she was an innocent that was distracting people's attention and I didn't think she was the Hunter, I tried to make her look completely innocent so the Penguin would choose to kill her at night.

Originally Posted by Enca

Phantom, you cheeky SOB.

Aww, thanks.

Originally Posted by Di

I actually started typing out this suspicion a couple times but then I backspaced because I thought, "Really, that kind of speculation can only help the penguins."

Good thinking.