WWJ IX: Psychotic Penguins: The Crossing of Helcaraxë

[Encaitare]

I feel that Boromir is a savvy enough player to have placed a fellow wolf in his suspicious list, which leaves us only with Roa and Anguirel. Nothing's definite, of course, but it is still a possibility.

Roa

Was the second person out of 7 to vote for Boro. Lalaith was first, and Roa cast her vote long before Boro's penguin-ness was revealed. Roa said that she was suspicious of Boromir since his second post, which read:

Originally Posted by Boromir88, post #14

Some quick comments on people so far before I must be off...

Valier and Eonwe are acting too strange to be evil penguins. I don't think wps would act in this manner in the very early goings of the game.

Firefoot brought up useful comment on the cobbler, one which I completely forgot about, seeing as I have no remembrance of a cobbler for a very very long time now. So Firefoot I'm ok with for now, a very logical sensible person to have around.

I can't find much significance in Roa's, phantom's, or Diamond's, posts yet, so there's nothing for me to go off of.

I shall now depart.

In post #72, Roa explains why she found Boro so supicious. In the post quotd above, Boro said that her posts were not very significant, but later cited one of those posts as grounds for suspecting her. He was also contradictory in other small ways. At the time I felt like Roa was being nitpicky with the way she compared every little thing he said, but now I'm glad she did. With the way Roa and Boro were going back and forth so heatedly yesterDay, I think it's safe to say that Roa is innocent.

Anguirel

He writes in a Day 1 post:

Originally Posted by Anguirel

Anyway, at this stage I'd rather have no hints at all. We shouldn't be too absorbed in our assets-the Gifted Ones will make themselves known at the right time-instead we should have an eye to our insidious enemies.

Incidentally, phantom old chap, are you still into killing Ordinary Elves on Day One to prevent the accidental lynching of a Gifted? I'm not.

Perhaps Ang and the phantom are just two very different players with two very different styles. Yet I feel like the suggestion that there be no attempt to divert attention away from the gifteds is a bit suspicious.

Originally Posted by Anguirel, post #55

So with little time to lose I am going to have to vote for Eonwe with the shoddy justification of his quietness.

It's true that Eonwe was very quiet, only posting a couple of times without any analysis, and didn't even cast a vote. But this makes me wonder why Ang chose to vote for Eonwe when he wasn't the only quiet player. I hadn't even posted at all by the time Ang voted. I suppose it was the lack of substance in the posts rather than the absence which made Ang make the choice he did.

Conclusion about Ang: inconclusive. He doesn't seem terribly suspicious to me at present, but I am not placing him on my probably-innocent-list.

[Diamond18]

Okey dokey, I've read through TiG X and gleaned just a couple things from it. In the early stages of the game Boro mostly ignored his fellow wolves or voiced only slight suspicion of them -- they were never amongst his top suspects. He barely interacted with Lalaith but did exchange some posts with tp. He latched onto the innocent Kuru and for most of the game treated him as innocent, only voicing any real suspicions late in the game, and only backed off when Kuru revealed himself as the Hunter. Other players he seemed to vary on as one would expect a convincing sort of innocent to do... I didn't find much that seemed to matter on that score. Some interesting early posts of Boro's were: #107 #200 & #256.

Note that in #200 he names phantom among the least suspicious and Lalaith only in the somehwat suspicious.

So, to compare that to this game...

Borrowing Roa's handy list:

Originally Posted by Roa's handy list

People Boromir though innocent

Valier
Mac
Jenny
Spawn
Eonwe

People Boromir wasn't sure about

phantom
Firefoot
Naria
Encaitare
Diamond

If Boro is following his usual wolvish behavior, then it's QUITE likely that there is one Werepenguin per group. From the second group I can rule out tp and myself, which leads me to want to look closely at Naria, Firefoot, and Enca. Unforunately, we have no knowns from the first group (unless you are an innocent in that group, then you can rule out yourself, happily). But I am fairly certain that the two wolves do not share a grouping.

If Boro was following his usual wolvish behavior, this group is looking pretty good at the moment:

Originally Posted by Roa's handy list

People Boromir Suspected

Lal
Roa
Kitanna
Ang

Well, obviously Lal and Kit are innocent. I'm inclined to look favorably on Ang and Roa for the time being, since Boro has shown a proclivity for being less supicious of his fellows in the early stages.

Of course, as I'm sure some are eager to point out, there is one inherent flaw in looking too closely at the parallels between TIG X and our current game. Boro may not have been behaving exactly the same. Boro has only been a werecreature once before, so we do not know whether he is the sort of mix it up or stay the same when evil. I'm inclined to think he's more likely to stay the same, but that's just me. Also, he most definitely had different compatriots for this game since Lal and tp are both innocents. Unless, that is, Lal is lying a blue streak and all three were once more teammates, oh horror of horrors, but as we have had no true seer step forward to declaim her, I'm not going to weird myself out with that prospect too much.

[the phantom]

I'm in the midst of reading over TiG X right now.... Tell me, did any of you post PM's at the end?

Yes. I used to write a review after every game of WW I was in. In this post, I have a link to the page containing my review. It's public knowledge.

[the phantom]

Okay, now I'll quickly explain the comment I made earlier.

Originally Posted by me

For right now, I'll just say that from the voting alone, Valier looks suspicious. Anguirel, Diamond, and Mac also make votes that would be the logical vote for a WP to make at the time it was cast. Firefoot's too, though a bit less so.

Why are their votes Penguinish, you ask?

Here are my reasons for suspecting their votes (in order from most suspicious to least).

1) Valier
She voted for Anguirel when the voting stood at-
Lalaith-4
Kitanna-3
Boro-2
Roa-1
Ang-1

She cast the vote when there were only three non-voters left. At that point, Lalaith had not revealed, and so it was a solid bet that, with two people already above him, Boro was safe, and thus a fellow Penguin's vote was not necessary to save him. A smart penguin would probably not vote for Lal or Kit (don't want to be part of lynching an innocent), would not vote for Boro (too risky to vote for him at that point), and would not vote for someone who had no votes at all (it would look like a throwaway vote).

The perfect scenario would be to vote for a Penguin with only one vote. It would create seperation without much of a risk. Is that what happened? Are Valier and Ang Penguins? We'll find out eventually.

2) Anguirel
He cast a very early vote for Eonwe. That's not a huge risk though, because we have retractable votes. As soon as Boro received a vote, Ang switched his vote to Kitanna, tying her for the early lead with Lalaith at two votes a piece. Padding Lalaith's lead would've been a bit too bold for a Penguin, so Ang did the next best thing and elevated another innocent into the lead.

3) Diamond
When Boro moved up to two votes with Kit and just behind Lal (who had three), Di stepped in and bumped Lal back up to a two point lead.

4) Mac
When Mac steps in it is a decent bet that Boro is safe (down 4-2 to Lal), and so Mac votes for Kit, bumping her up from 2 to 3. That seems like the sort of thing a Penguin would do. Instead of voting for the leader and getting the hands dirty, or appearing like you're trying to pad the lead to save a fellow penguin, you instead elevate another innocent up to near the top.

5) Firefoot
She was the first to stack her vote onto someone who already had a vote. Also, she never tried to retract despite the fact that she had voted for the Seer. That doesn't sound like Ff (though I guess it's possible she was just busy).

[Lalaith]

Lal is lying a blue streak and all three were once more teammates

Now wouldn't that be fun. But alas, no. This is my last Day among you...I will die, Di, tonight, at the hands of those avian monstrosities.
Speaking of which, (ie the fact that we were all teammates) I too have my opinions on Boro as a wolf, although no-one seems to have had the courtesy to ask me for them, ahem.
I think Boro's wolvish behaviour would depend on who his team-mates were. The plan, when we were all wolves together that time, was that phantom would do his usual thing, and I would lie low. This seemed to work, so he never had to attack either of us, although I remember him saying he would certainly have no compunction in rounding on one of us if necessary. He would also I think quite understand if, say, a Roa-style wolf decided to attack him.
What I do find unlikely is that he would go on about Mac's innocence in that obvious way if Mac were one of his team-mates.

I like your list Phantom. In Ang's defence, I would repeat that his defence of me was not unexpected. A guilty Ang might have copied this behaviour possibly, voted for Kit saying "I hope this saves Lalaith", and then disappeared pleading revision duties or something. But I don't think he would have stuck around trying to convince everybody else, as well, in the way he did. But I could be wrong.
(And if I am, I will make a point of calling him Angurl-iel for a long time after this.)

[Lalaith]

she saves her retraction for possibly retracting on herself, and in the next it's "I need to remain alive - only I can save Lal."

Again, I feel I must defend the brave, dead Kit. She had to say she was prepared to retract to herself, otherwise she would have looked extremely WP-ish and we would have lynched her anyway.

I also must give credit to Roa's very useful postings today, - but also giving credit to her WW brilliance, she is one of the few players here who could carry off the double-act of being so helpful and still being a WP.

[Anguirel]

I must say, Kitanna's death scene was one of the most...disturbing I've ever read. Mindlessness. Urgh. Certainly, penguins that fester kill far worse than wolves.

Now that the phantom is a proven innocent, I have a cunning plan. phantom me hearty, be as utterly patronising, superior and irritating as possible. Then maybe the two remaining recreant scum won't be able to resist temptation, will kill you next Night and grant Lalaith another dream. Hmph. Maybe not.

More seriously, I have a good deal of conduct to explain last night. The question that seems to be being posed most widely is: what was the point of that first vote for Eonwe?

Well, I said it was shoddy at the time. Both Enca and Naria were admittedly as quiet or quieter than Eonwe, so my stated reasoning of Eonwe's silence was bilge. I can only plead the following facts-

1. I was in a great hurry. It was developing into rather a tricky evening. Ergo I had little time for analysis.

2. At that point I actually wanted to accuse Kitanna, but felt doing so without devoting time to building a proper case would be a cop-out. Eonwe was my back up. (Of course, I ended up voting for Kitanna on pretty dodgy evidence anyway, in the event, due to mistaken hype about the deadline.)

3. I was pretty sure Enca would turn up and contribute later, while Eonwe-who I know as a veteran deadline-dodger-might well have already said his peace. And as for Naria, to be honest I'd forgotten she was playing...though as it turned out she certainly made the final moments rather more dramatic...

So, yes, last night was a total mess, probably the greatest disgrace I've mired myself in since the Shamville days. What did I say about Boromir again?

"Given the extreme frailty of the evidence against him, it's quite odd that he's bothering to defend himself at all."

At the time I thought it was rather a bon mot. Doh.

I think, however, that my suspicions of Diamond may not be quite so wildly misguided. More on that anon.

[Lalaith]

Further to my previous post about Kitanna having to reveal: rather than ponder the wherefores of this, we would be better employed inspecting the circumstances which forced her out of the closet.
I'm talking about the people who were hanging around at the end of deadline, but not coming forward, once I had revealed. An honest person would, under such circumstances, immediately declare their presence, and suggest/ask how their vote might best be put to use, or perhaps more impulsively, put that vote to use immediately.

I will, later, go back and inspect the course of events, with timings, to get a better grasp of this.