Tol-in-Gaurhoth IV (The Saga, erm, Still Continues...)

[Anguirel]

Ironic indeed. the phantom was correct about his innocence, but the late heroic seaman Eomer was even more wise about his survivability.

It seems to me that we must examine the village records, and see who fanned the flames to destroy Eomer-in particular those who committed themselves late, but decisively.

The healer-shirriff's demise has assured one thing for me-as I said earlier, the furrier Saurreg is unlikely to be a werewolf and to be acting alone. Indeed, his defence of the phantom, effective and well-timed, makes me suspect he is the other shirriff (as the phantom claimed that Eomer had guessed). I feel free to suggest this as, alone, a shirriff is of limited use to the village, and I do not feel this possible exposure will increase the chances of his murder by wolves. Despite Eomer's parting words to us, I believe we can absolve Saurreg of guilt, whether to conspiracy or murder.

As for my own exhortation that the phantom be hanged, I am unapologetic. His divisive tactics and feudings, in any case, did not befit his lawful rank and harmed the village more than they benefitted. But I will add that he was undoubtedly a brave, if misguided, man, utterly true to his own convictions; the convictions that the wolves among us exploited. Eru keep his soul.

[Lalaith]

So we are nine.

And the souls of two of those already dead lie heavy on my conscience, our poor Guardian and innocent Oddwen, slaughtered by my numerical idiocy. And poor phantom, I was so wrong about him, as he was so wrong about Eomer.

I have thought however of one slight silver lining. At least, if we wake up with no-one dead, we will know for sure that the wolves' ranks have been swelled by the cursed villager - there will be no optimistic pondering about Guardian success. Of course, among our many lynching blunders, the cursed villager may already lie dead.
Among our nine innocents, we still have our Seer and the Guardian, and one lonely Shirriff.
It is ironic to think that of those five who were nominated on our first day, three are now dead and all were innocent. Esgalhugwen and Saurreg are remaining nominees surviving from that first day. No-one stepped forward to save them, either, so can we deduce from that, that both are innocent? (Phantom could not save Saurreg, if Saurreg was in truth the other shirriff, as he had already voted).
Or was perhaps one a werewolf, and his two partners in evil ready to let him die for the sake of taking four innocents with him in a mass lynching?
Will the other shirriff now step forward and declare himself, I wonder?

[the guy who be short]

Guardian = Ranger = Kath = Dead.

The Hunter is still alive.

[Lalaith]

Sorry, I just keep getting those two mixed up. I think I must be in denial about the whole Kath thing, I felt so bad about it.

[Lalaith]

Anguirel, I know what you are saying, but if a wolf was to pit himself against the true shirriff, it would have to be a wolf with a convincing case, one who has made posts supporting the phantom?
But of those gifted who are still left, will the wolves at this stage be so keen to kill any of them?
The Seer, once dead and thus with his/her identity revealed, leaves a meaningful trail of posts behind him/her, which could help the survivors.
The Hunter might on his death kill one of the werewolves.
The remaining Shirriff is no more use than an ordinary villager.
No, I think that the werewolves will be looking to kill the Cursed villager. If of course we have not already killed him.
I tried to save Eomer because I thought he might be the Seer, as he seemed to know my innocence. But that was when I thought the phantom guilty. I thought Eomer had also dreamt about the phantom, you see.
The Seer has now had three dreams. Can we find his or her hints?

[Anguirel]

For their sake, I hope not. We want this putative trail to be rather longer...

Now, to the main matter at hand. Who helped put the nail in Eomer and Oddwen's coffins, especially when there was little left to lose, but also in cases of particularly skilled prosecution? Supporters of lynching the phantom-among whom I am numbered-should be impartially examined as well. But most of all-beware the bandwagon.

Oddwen's innocence was clear to me the moment she wasted her vote on a tit for tat against Celuien-a candidate unlikely to attract support, who all evidence of her argument suggests she is genuinely trying to work things out for the village. That was not the action of a wolf.

On the other hand, Evisse's much earlier denunciation of the luckless Lalaith strikes me as rather more sinister; this could have developed into a strong case due to Lalaith's earlier apparent misfortune with our Ranger. Note also Evisse's insistence on her vote's tactical nature-an attempt to duck blame if Lalaith is found to be innocent. It seems slightly lupine, though this only occurred to me ten minutes ago, and is far from a developed or reinforced case...

[Evisse the Blue]

Hmmm. I think the phantom was kinda right. The werewolves might have tried to frame him and lynch him on Day 2, then when they couldn't do it, they killed him at Night. Why else wouldn't they kill him on Night 2 then, only to finally do him in the following Night? So maybe we should start looking at the way everyone voted. My theory is that last Day's events were an attempted lynching against phantom that got out of hand, because people somehow were more persuaded to vote against Eomer and Oddwen. I do suspect however that the last votes for Oddwen at the very end of the Day were placed in order to create the tie.

Originally Posted by Fea

Either way, it's not reassuring.

Even less reassuring is you coming up with different suspects every day. That and the fact that on day 1 you told Eomer and phantom 'I hope you both die' and then, lo and behold...You're gonna tell me you didn't vote for Eomer on day 2, yes I know....Also, it doesn't look like you'll be voting for LMP on this one...

As for why I voted for Lalaith yesterday...
Basically I wanted to scatter the votes. And I wasn't convinced of either one's guilt (the phantom's or Eomer), so I didn't want to vote just to go along with the crowd. Most mistakes are made like that, as we all must realize by now.
At the moment I cast my vote, I could see two sides forming: pro phantom and pro Eomer. One of these sides was guilty, one was innocent. Or ironically they were both innocent, as I see it now, and the wolves were somewhere in the middle, laughing. As I couldn't tell which was which, I decided to select from my suspect list another name, in order to scatter the votes. This way, there was a bigger chance there was a werewolf on the lynch list.

Ironically, Oddwen was also on my suspect list, but as I went back to read through what she said, I realized I had ridiculously little against her.

I wanted to vote for someone who was on my suspect list and whose position I was not at all sure of. And if you want to know the reasons Lalaith was even on my suspect list, here they are: she seems a very logical and analytical person who nonetheless did cast a hasty vote for Kath on day 1 (ok, I know it was day 1 and all of us were dancing in the dark, but there were more suspicious characters than Kath around) , then even on day 2 she managed to work her way around arguments in such a way that I couldn't tell who she was suspecting, (which made her one of those 'grey' characters I mentioned as suspicious on Day 1. She said she would have voted for phantom but didn't, instead cast her vote for Oddwen to save Eomer whom she claimed she thought was gifted. But whatever reasons we all had to think Eomer was gifted, must have been disspelled by then, as no gifted one would go so aggresively after someone like he went after the phantom and Saurreg. Also, I wanted to see if she usually ignores her name coming up under suspicion, or she just made an exception when Eomer half jokingly accused her on Day 1. On Day 2 Lalaith somehow manages to create a tie between two innocents. Of course, she could argue that simply cross posting with Esga could mean she missed her post above, which is quite believable.
But why wait until the very end to cast your vote? And not to forget, I quite suspect Esga as well.

Also, there's something else I find unsettling about Lalaith: she keeps bringing into discussion the gifted villagers, in such a way, as if she expected us to point towards this person or that as being gifted, or to share our opinions of who is gifted and how. Not that innocent villagers are not allowed to wonder who the gifted villagers are, but are you willing to risk such information to be out in the open in order for you to have more certainty?

[Firefoot]

I recommend taking a closer look at Firefoot, unless in my skimmings I missed something important (such as her not actually being alive any more). Either she's bad enough at this that she's been wrong about all of her suspects, or she's trying to frame them up because people think she's trustworthy. Either way, it's not reassuring.

But I was right about both Eomer and phantom, wasn't I?

I am not having a very good time choosing my suspects right now (obviously). Towards the end of voting I was feeling irritated with Saurreg for his comments such as "at least someone here knows what he's talking about." (Note: I said irritation, not suspicion. I'm not ready to blame anybody yet today.)

For what it's worth, yesterday's voting was:

Eomer - 5 (*Saurreg*, Hookbill, phantom, dancing spawn, lmp)
Oddwen - 5 (Nilp, *Celuien*, Firefoot, Esga, Lalaith)
Phantom - 2 (Anguirel, Eomer)
LMP - 1 (Fea)
Lalaith - 1 (Evisse)
Celuien - 1 (Oddwen)

Day 1's voting with newly proven innocents filled in.

Anyway, I'm going to review the thread more closely before making more accusations. Hopefully we can bag a werewolf today.

[Lalaith]

Anguierel, looking for chief prosecutors is not always the right solution, it was after all phantom who drove the Eomer bandwaggon. He just had the wrong end of the stick.
I'll tell you what puzzle is keeping me awake at night - the first day's voting.
Did the wolves vote or abstain? Did sit back to enjoy a wholescale massacre, or did they engineer it?

[Anguirel]

I also wonder if the Shirriff will come into the open. More interestingly, will wolves, or simple rogues and tricksters who love to sow confusion, claim shirriffdom; a risky tactic, but potentially a rewarding one? We must be on our guard. In the end, I believe the direct unmasking of the shirriff will only help the wolves; however, we may indirectly unmask the shirriff by defending villagers on the grounds that we believe they are the shirriff, as I did with Saurreg. This shows the clarity of our thought processes and helps back up our rhetoric and theories with appropriate rationale.