[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by mormegil

Where is everybody? It's too quiet for me.

I am still here as my dignitarial duties (ie work) may keep me from being here tomorrow as much as I would like.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Of course, it could be an elaborate ruse designed to get us to think exactly that. But somehow it doesn't strike me that way. If Eomer intended to try to divert out suspicion from Tar, why would he wait until the last minute like that?

I have been doing some further thinking about that interplay between Celuien and Eomer at the sharp end of yesterday. It may well have been genuine on both their parts (although genuine is perhaps not the right word for Eomer's part in it). But an Eomer-Wolf is a tricksy beast, so it's quite possible that there is more to it than that. One possibility is that they were both play acting, in an effort to establish the seeming innocence of a Wolfish Celuien. However, that would have required a degree of co-ordination on both their parts which I think would probably have been difficult for them to achieve at that time. The other possibility is the one that you have suggested, Aiwendil. That Eomer, concluding that his number was most likely up, acted the way that he did to disassociate himself from a Wolfish tar-ancalime, with the aim of giving her a better chance of surviving today. Possibly, he waited until the last minute because he thought that the votes could save him yet, without need to resort to such a desperate ploy. Or perhaps I am just reading too much into it.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

But in my opinion, it's still possible that Nilpaurion, Saucepan, or Mormegil could be a wolf.

I am not a Wolf. Of course, I don't expect you to take my word for it, so you will have to make up your own mind. It's possible that either Nilp or morm (or possibly both) are, and that they decided to sacrifice Eomer. But I think it unlikely that they would have voted for him so early, without seeing if there was a chance he might be spared the noose. And morm makes a fair point. It was him who really kept the spotlight on Eomer. If morm is a Wolf, it would have to have been a wholly premeditated sacrifice. Still, I wouldn't put it past him.

Originally Posted by mormegil

I would like to try a detailed analysis of all non-Eomer voters.

Well, for my part, I thought it worth taking a closer look at Farael's contributions yesterday.

He was the first to arrive, following the discovery of spawn's body, and immediately raised the question of whether it might be a set up.

Originally Posted by Farael @ #331

Hmm, this death makes Eomer look pretty bad... almost too bad to be real, don'tcha think?

I am sure that the point will have occured to most if not all of us, but that seems a pretty strong way of putting it.

After suspicions of Eomer are voiced by most of those present and morm questions whether he is prepared to write off Eomer as innocent, he replies:

Originally Posted by Farael @ #342

No, I think it's either a very bold move or a very smart one.

Which looks to me rather like he is trying to hedge his bets. He then attempts to tie Eomer in with his long-standing case against Aiwendil, although I don't really follow what he is trying to say here. Immediately after that (#343), he defends his plan to lynch littlemanpoet by essentially saying that, had lmp been a Wolf, it would strongly have implicated Aiwendil but that, lmp's innocence notwithstanding, he still suspected Aiwendil. He says much the same thing in #347. I really don't get the reasoning behind this at all.

In #352, he claims that he has been voicing suspicions of Eomer, although it looks to me more like he was trying to play it safe and see how the village's opinion of Eomer developed. Not surprisingly, he seizes upon Aiwendil's thoughts on Eomer as a further basis upon which to accuse Aiwendil. Aiwendil had wondered whether a Wolfish Eomer bold enough to have killed spawn would have played it so safe in terms of accusation. Although we now know that Eomer is a Wolf, that seemed to me a reasonable point at the time. Farael makes the point that it is in the nature of a Wolf to be appear one way yet act another. Again, a reasonable point, although I hardly think that Aiwendil's comments implicate him to quite the degree that Farael makes out. Still, Farael has been single-minded in his pursuit of Aiwendil since Day 1.

But what I find most interesting is his post #382. By this stage, Eomer was on three votes and Boro on one. He starts off by saying that he doesn't want to join the Eomer bandwaggon. Then he says (quite bizarrely, in my view) that he is not nearly so suspicious of Aiwendil as he has made out and goes on to explain further his reasoning behind the lmp/Aiwendil thing. I still don't understand it. But it is what he says next that I find most curious:

Originally Posted by Farael @ #382

Now, I still think Eomer is set between a rock and a hard place... I want to announce to 'the public' that I mean to vote for him. If I vote for anyone else (likely Aiwendil for concistency's sake) it's just because Eomer is already convicted and I want to get fewer names for the wolves to hide on. Of course you could think I am a wolf bailing out on what could be see as bandwaggoning... well, if you think so then lynch me and remember my words above after that.

Now that we have that cleared up, I'd say that right now my true suspect is Eomer (sorry buddy, but you really are in bad shape right now and while you could think that it's what the wolves want us to think, I fear that we might be over-analysing things).

So, now that Eomer is looking a prime candidate for lynching, Farael names him as his "true suspect". He signals that he is going to vote for Eomer, but says that he might vote for someone else if Eomer is already condemned "to get fewer names for the Wolves to hide on". I don't get that at all. If Eomer was already condemned, then a vote for another villager would surely only help the other Wolves to hide. It looks to me like Farael was trying to make himself look good in case Eomer was lynched and found to be a Wolf, yet at the same time preemptively giving himself some cover in case he decided that his vote might look better if it was placed elsewhere. If Eomer was your "true suspect", Farael, why didn't you vote for him here? Instead, you failed to turn up to vote at all. I accept your reason for that, but it doesn't explain why you did not vote earlier. Did you in fact think that your vote might be needed to save Eomer?

As far as I can see, the only thing that speaks in Farael's favour is that Eomer attacked him on a number of occasions, most notably on Day 2 (#178), but also subsequently I think. However, Farael has so far never been under serious suspicion and has received only one vote to date (a "random" vote from Nilp on Day 1). So it is quite possible that these were "safe" accusations by Eomer, designed to put some distance between them in the event that one of them was lynched.

Would a Wolfish Farael have acted the way he has, with his single-minded pursuit of Aiwendil, his plan to lynch lmp, his (to put it kindly) rather difficult to follow reasoning, and his (to my mind) rather bizarre behavior yesterday? Quite possibly in my view. It has succeeded in sparing him from much suspicion so far, precisely because it looks too bold for a Wolf. And, in some cases, it has only served to confuse and, in the case of the "lynch lmp" plan, help divert the village down the wrong path.

In any event, having taken a much closer look at him, his behaviour looks distinctly Wolfish to me.

I hope to get a chance to look more closely at some of the other non-Eomer voters too, although they may have to wait until tomorrow, assuming that my duties allow me.