Tol-in-Gaurhoth CXIV – The Evil Breath of Morgoth in Dor-lómin, game thread

[Lalaith]

So, I pondered in the night that one thing this game has highlighted, is that both innocents and wolves can slip up.
Kit's late-night blurt at G55's false ranger reveal, and then (which most of us failed to spot) Huey's wolf email slip...

I've been thinking Emails With Wolves sounds like quite a low-key sequel to Dances with Wolves...

Brinn:

Least suspicious votes of the Hui voters are Legate and Pitchwife. They were earlier and really got the ball rolling. Eonwe or Lalaith could possibly be wolf-on-wolf votes if they thought he was not worth saving. I'm somewhere in between the two on Lottie.

Your own vote for Hui cross-posted, I think, with mine. If Eonwe and I (and possibly Lottie) are slightly suspicious Hui voters in your mind, what about your vote?

[Lalaith]

Another thing: I have, like a lot of people, been thinking about wolf-on-wolf voting, and with two specific questions in mind:
1. Does Legate's first vote for Hui mean that I was wrong to suspect him yesterDay?
2. Does Hui's 3rd vote for Mac point to his (Mac's) innocence?

Another thing then crossed my mind. Would the fact that a dead wolf ensures that the baddie vote now dominates the QT, make wolves less reluctant to lynch each other? After all, this means the packmate can continue to be useful and push their agenda elsewhere...

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Another thing: I have, like a lot of people, been thinking about wolf-on-wolf voting, and with two specific questions in mind:
1. Does Legate's first vote for Hui mean that I was wrong to suspect him yesterDay?
2. Does Hui's 3rd vote for Mac point to his (Mac's) innocence?

Another thing then crossed my mind. Would the fact that a dead wolf ensures that the baddie vote now dominates the QT, make wolves less reluctant to lynch each other? After all, this means the packmate can continue to be useful and push their agenda elsewhere...

1. I think Legate is pretty innocent-looking.
2. Not necessarily. I still say with five wolves they could afford to be a bit reckless voting one another.

As far as the QT goes, as long as we here know their vote is decided by wolves, we won't put any confidence in it. And really, having to be in well before our DL reduces the weight it might otherwise carry.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Another thing then crossed my mind. Would the fact that a dead wolf ensures that the baddie vote now dominates the QT, make wolves less reluctant to lynch each other? After all, this means the packmate can continue to be useful and push their agenda elsewhere...

A good point to consider. Of course the Wolves would not go straightaway "let's get one of ourselves lynched so we can continue to get one extra vote via the QT" - that would be absolutely useless strategy as one live Wolf gives as much of a vote as an entire dead QT. But they might still consider it a "consolation prize".

But let's make sure we differentiate properly here, as it's about small nuances: i.e. it is still obviously preferrable for the WWs not to get any of them lynched, ever, at all. They may just be a bit less reluctant to Wolf-on-Wolf vote than they would otherwise be. But nothing more, nothing less. It definitely does not mean that they would be eager to do so.

[Lalaith]

Now something today about Eonwe didn't sit right and I went back over his posts. This is what I found.

YesterDay, Eonwe makes two posts drawing attention to the interaction betwen Shasta and Kit the second wondering if they are an infector pair
Then:
Eonwe, 5.23pm yesterDay (my italics)

Now that the Ranger discussion has been brought out into the public, I have to say that this post makes me feel better about Shasta:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shastanis Althreduin View Post
I think perhaps Kitanna is my best read at the moment. I had fundamentally the same reaction to G55's eleventh-hour Ranger claim as she did.
I know last time I said that it is possible that they are both wolves being cheeky, but it does seem more likely that he was, at least in that instance, trying to bury this discussion by pointing to Kit's post as something anyone might say. Again, it is possible that they are being very bold wolves, but generally, it seems risky to attach so closely to another wolf especially when you've voted in the same way. So whoever Shasta thinks the Ranger is, I think he is trying to protect them here by trying to suppress this discussion that has just been blown open (luckily not enough for any reveals to occur). Thus doesn't necessarily say anything about Kit's role, or even what Shasta thinks about Kit's role - whether he believes/believed that she is a gifted, ordo, or wolf, discussion of the Ranger is dangerous for the real Ranger.

(NB this was something Lottie had pointed to earlier anyway)
Then
Lalaith 7.22pm yesterDay

Ok I wasn't going to say anything about The Kit Thing but seeing as it's being openly discussed - *glares at certain people* -

(this is the first time I mention Kit at all)

Eonwe toDay re Kit:

I don't think it was a 100% obvious thing, and I'm a little suspicious of those who act like it was - it's a lot easier to believe someone's slip when you know no-one is trying to lie to you. I know part of my reason for putting her in the maybe suspicious category was to not make it such a big thing like you and Zil did. The more attention that got drawn to it, the more obvious it seemed.

Lalaith - I didn't like how she brought more attention to the fact that Kit was the Ranger yesterDay

So TL;DR Eonwe spends a lot of time yesterDay talking about Kit and Shasta, first as suspicious and then he openly discusses her being a Ranger, two hours before I mention her at all (at a time when KitRanger had been discussed by lots of people) and then toDay finds my comment suspicious for outing Kit.

Really. This does not look good.

[Lalaith]

Legate

They may just be a bit less reluctant to Wolf-on-Wolf vote than they would otherwise be. But nothing more, nothing less. It definitely does not mean that they would be eager to do so.

Yes, that was basically my point.

[Macalaure]

There isn't much in her first few posts, aside from some general musing. I pointed out her defense of Huin in #135 before. Knowing he was evil and I am not, I cannot see this as not suspicious. Right after that, she casts some suspicious light on him and Lommy. In her big list in #164 she keeps the spotlight on Lommy, but gets fluffy on Huin:

Originally Posted by Greeny

Huinesoron – Doesn’t follow the herd and brings up points others haven’t. Suspected Lommy, defended Mac. I get a good vibe so far, though worth keeping an eye on.

Later she talks some about the things surrounding Gala and looked at Kitanna and found her mostly innocent. All good and well. In #206 she turns on me and then shortly after votes for me.

Originally Posted by Greeney

Maybe flimsy, but that post (#196) where he says he doesn't know who to vote for, lists a few people he feels good about, comes up with a decent argument against Brinniel and finishes with calling an earlier post by her "wolfie", is the single most suspicious thing I've seen toDay.

I'm biased here, obviously, but I really don't think my post had the merit of "the single most suspicious thing". Also, "the single most suspicious thing" clashes quite a bit with "maybe flimsy". If what I did was so suspicious, then why call the suspicion flimsy in the same sentence??


Starts Day2 with solid contributions, then goes off on me and Brinn. A key point in her suspicion is that she's under the assumption that we both mean the wolves killed Rikae only to frame one of us. This is fair enough, as at this point neither of us explicitly stated that that's not the only thing to it, I think.

The way she focuses as we get closer to the deadline worries me. Yes, innocents can make up their mind stubbornly and single-mindedly push for their candidates once it gets to voting, but the vibe I get is just sinister. She repeats the same things without taking in anything new. Greenie and Lommy made very similar cases against me, put compare Greenie's handling of it to Lommy's. Then again, I do understand how lack of time can make one act like this. Unfortunately, that's what lack of time does to wolves, too.

Her vote comes when the rising suspicion against Huin was in the air, but the first vote had not been cast yet, so her vote by itself is not too problematic.


ToDay she admits to her tunnel-vision. Fair enough. She backs off of me and Brinn, largely because she over-committed before. I could see both an innocent or a wolf doing this.

Originally Posted by Greenie

later lists Huin under “very bad” along with me, but this is after he had already voted so couldn’t act on it.

Incorrect. This is by the time I got to make that list. I turned on him right after he made his post linking me and Inzil. He made several posts, acknowledging my suspicion in one, between that and his vote.

Greenie's main suspects in her list (outside of Brinn and me) are Sally and Inzil, who are pretty much universally suspected by everyone, it seems, so that's a fairly safe thing to do.

The rest of her posts toDay all seem fair and helpful, though the explanation of her vote to Legate seems a bit wolfish. Wolves pre-think how their votes can be made to sound all reasonable before the Day starts, and I get a bit of that vibe there.


In conclusion, much of my suspicion of her is based on her behavior towards me, so at any rate I understand why others wouldn't be picking up the same vibe. She's not as glaringly evil as I thought, but she still gives me major heebie-jeebies.


(Boro has been odd all game, and if nothing else, his vote alone warrants a closer look, so that's where I'm headed next.)

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Now something today about Eonwe didn't sit right and I went back over his posts. This is what I found.

YesterDay, Eonwe makes two posts drawing attention to the interaction betwen Shasta and Kit the second wondering if they are an infector pair
Then:
Eonwe, 5.23pm yesterDay (my italics)

(NB this was something Lottie had pointed to earlier anyway)
Then
Lalaith 7.22pm yesterDay

(this is the first time I mention Kit at all)

Eonwe toDay re Kit:



So TL;DR Eonwe spends a lot of time yesterDay talking about Kit and Shasta, first as suspicious and then he openly discusses her being a Ranger, two hours before I mention her at all (at a time when KitRanger had been discussed by lots of people) and then toDay finds my comment suspicious for outing Kit.

Really. This does not look good.

I can see where you're coming from with some of this, but a lot of this post is either misleading or untrue.

Here are those first two posts (in full, so they can't be twisted out of context):

Originally Posted by Eönwë

This is a good point!

For reference, here is the vote count (borrowed from Nog's post with the last vote added):

Lhuna -> Lhuna
Rikae -> Brinniel
G55 -> Rikae
Boro -> Pitchwife
Urwen -> G55
Pitchwife -> Brinniel 2
Kath -> G55 2
Shasta -> Pitchwife 2
Kitanna -> Pitchwife 3
Inzil -> G55 3
Lottie -> G55 4
Greenie -> Macalaure
THE Ka -> Brinniel 3
Eönwë -> Urwen
Rune -> Brinniel 4
Lommy -> G55 5
Huines -> G55 6
Legate -> Brinn 5
Macalaure -> Brinn 6
Brinniel -> G55 7
Sally -> Brinniel



One thing that I don't think people have really addressed toDay is that Pitch was seriously on the chopping block yesterDay and then managed to get taken out of the running, and a large part of that was G55 becoming an eligible vote candidate due to Zil and Lottie.

As a side note, come to think of it, Boro writing the above post and not mentioning this specifically when Pitch was the only viable non-Brinn vote-candidate at the time, while also voting for Pitch and not including the full vote-list (and thus leaving others to find out for themselves) could suggest a potential arms-length Boro-Pitch Infector pairing, which is an interesting idea that I'm going to have to look into.

On the other hand, while I'm sure there are wolves hiding in both the late Brinn and G55 votes, I think some of the earlier votes look like they could also be interesting (for example Shasta and Kitanna's Pitch-waggon that temporarily made Pitch the most-voted), but I will need to look at them more closely when I have time.

However, if Brinn does turn out to be a wolf, THE Ka and Legate are potential candidates for treading the (Infector-y) just-risky-enough-to-not-seem-throwaway-but-not-directly-leading-to-packmate-being-quarantined vote line.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Maybe I'm just paranoid and seeing possible wolf-groups everywhere, but after their coordinated votes yesterDay and this post:

I can't help wondering if Shasta and Kitanna aren't an Infector duo being too obvious and just messing with us (though whether this would make Brinn more likely to be an Infector or someone they're trying to frame is up in the air).

In the first post, I mention that those two voting for a third when there were already two with 2 votes each bore more looking at and the next post was based on that.

Then, after sleeping for a night, seeing the next page being full of discussion about Kit, I was thinking about how bad Zil bringing up Kit felt to me (and everyone else seemingly), and decided to look at different people's reactions to the discussion. And Shasta seemed to the clearest case of someone trying to suppress the discussion about the Ranger while also trying to distance Kit from the role/make it seem like a foregone conclusion that Kit was the Ranger.

Originally Posted by Eönwë

Now that the Ranger discussion has been brought out into the public, I have to say that this post makes me feel better about Shasta:

I know last time I said that it is possible that they are both wolves being cheeky, but it does seem more likely that he was, at least in that instance, trying to bury this discussion by pointing to Kit's post as something anyone might say. Again, it is possible that they are being very bold wolves, but generally, it seems risky to attach so closely to another wolf especially when you've voted in the same way. So whoever Shasta thinks the Ranger is, I think he is trying to protect them here by trying to suppress this discussion that has just been blown open (luckily not enough for any reveals to occur). Thus doesn't necessarily say anything about Kit's role, or even what Shasta thinks about Kit's role - whether he believes/believed that she is a gifted, ordo, or wolf, discussion of the Ranger is dangerous for the real Ranger.

Specifically, I was moving the discussion from Kit to people's interaction with the conversation, and note that I specifically mentioned that she could still be other roles, which was certainly possible - a number of people toDay have confirmed (or at least claimed) that they didn't think she was really the Ranger.

Also, you should note that (at least as far as I can tell when looking back), I was the one who originally brought up that Shasta looked better for this - Lottie was the one who agreed with me. So that was a false statement.

On the other hand, you posted this:

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Ok I wasn't going to say anything about The Kit Thing but seeing as it's being openly discussed - *glares at certain people* -
Could the people who are still putting Kit in the 'slightly/fairly' suspicious category please explain to me - how would a Kitwolf know G55 was lying about being a Ranger? All a Kitwolf would know was that G55 was not a wolf.

While it may have been obvious to you that Kit was the Ranger, clearly it wasn't a foregone conclusion to others, and therefore it seems reasonable that people (innocent people that is) would either still suspect her, of if they really did believe her, would want to muddy the waters a bit. I still think those who act like everyone should have just accepted that Kit had outed herself are suspicious.


edit: grammar

[A Little Green]

Originally Posted by Lommy

Fishy fishy lupine fish.

Can we please start calling all suspicious people this? <333

Originally Posted by Lommy

Yeah, I noticed this when Lhuna pointed it out but it was so glaring that I actually ignored it?! Given that, like I've said, I had hard time understanding where Hui was ever coming from, I gave them the benefit of doubt and interpreted it as them talking about having email subsrcibed to the ww thread. But looks like the simpler explanation was true and I should have certainly remembered this slip because had Hui's meaning been innocent, I can't see why they wouldn't have replied to Lhuna and clarified it. But yes, quite telling that no one else than Lhuna caught onto or commented on this. (I'm not sure it automatically makes Lhuna innocent though? If the slipup seemed obvious to wolf!Lhuna, wouldn't she hurry to point it out because she might feel it's fishy not to. Then maybe she dropped it because everybody else ignored it and she thought maybe she overreacted and her packmate didn't condemn themselves after all?)

Hm. I find Lhuna somewhat concerning so this is a definite possibility - in a way, a fellow wolf would be more sensitive to noticing wolf slips or thinking them obviously noticeable to everyone given that she'd know it was a slip.

Originally Posted by Lalaith

1. Does Legate's first vote for Hui mean that I was wrong to suspect him yesterDay?
2. Does Hui's 3rd vote for Mac point to his (Mac's) innocence?

Another thing then crossed my mind. Would the fact that a dead wolf ensures that the baddie vote now dominates the QT, make wolves less reluctant to lynch each other? After all, this means the packmate can continue to be useful and push their agenda elsewhere...

I'd say -

1) Legate being first to vote Huin in itself wouldn't be enough to absolve him, as he could have been counting on Mac being a certain lynch regardless of what he did. But this isn't what it sounded like at all. He checked first whether others would like to join him in voting Huin and only did so after a few others had expressed interest, and later egged others on to vote Huin. If wolf-on-wolf, this would be not only very brutal (not just throwing someone under the bus but actually inviting more buses to come along) but also quite unnecessary; why would Legate throw in a fairly under-the-radar fellow when he himself wasn't even suspected that much and didn't need the brownie points? So I'm inclined to leave Legate alone for the time being.

2) Not necessarily in my opinion - as I recall, it already looked like it was going to be between the two of them, and it's possible he decided to turn wolf-on-wolf to make whoever survived look better. I still think there's some merit to Lottie's point about it being somewhat unlikely that both of our major bandwagons yesterDay were against wolves, as we still had five wolves in play and at least some of them probably would rather have voted for an innocent than a packmate. Even given how last-minute the Huinwagon was, Inzil, Lommy and Lottie had also been voted, and Brinn was discussed. So if Huin and Mac were both wolves, I would have expected more of a push towards another candidate from their unknown packmates since there were other options on the table too.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by A Little Green

So if Huin and Mac were both wolves, I would have expected more of a push towards another candidate from their unknown packmates since there were other options on the table too.

This is a good point. I or Lottie could have been better candidates. Maybe I should reconsider about Mac.

x/d with Lal

[Lalaith]

One more thing and then I really must go out into the sunshine. (kudos to all players who are able to post stuff on their phones - don't know how you do it. I need two tabs open on a pc to cope at all)
Greenie could you explain what you mean here? It might just be me being old and slow but the second part of your argument seems to contradict the first? Ie you start by saying Mac doesn't seem more innocent, but your last statement seems to imply he was, because if he was a wolf something else would have happened?

2) Not necessarily in my opinion - as I recall, it already looked like it was going to be between the two of them, and it's possible he decided to turn wolf-on-wolf to make whoever survived look better. I still think there's some merit to Lottie's point about it being somewhat unlikely that both of our major bandwagons yesterDay were against wolves, as we still had five wolves in play and at least some of them probably would rather have voted for an innocent than a packmate. Even given how last-minute the Huinwagon was, Inzil, Lommy and Lottie had also been voted, and Brinn was discussed. So if Huin and Mac were both wolves, I would have expected more of a push towards another candidate from their unknown packmates since there were other options on the table too

[A Little Green]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Greenie could you explain what you mean here? It might just be me being old and slow but the second part of your argument seems to contradict the first? Ie you start by saying Mac doesn't seem more innocent, but your last statement seems to imply he was, because if he was a wolf something else would have happened?

Ah, this is me being unclear - I think there's a "but" or "however" missing halfway through that quote! To clarify, I don't think Huin's vote for Mac makes Mac look more innocent, but there was another argument against them being fellow wolves that I found quite plausible.