Mafia 65: Dreamland II [Hidden]

[dargorygel]

Sometimes it is hard to tell night from day… at least at those times of transition. Night slipping into day, and day slipping into night. Clocks help, but sometimes they feel artificial. Especially when DST is involved.

Long ago Arabs defined ‘dawn’ as the moment when you can distinguish a black thread from a white thread.

But here in Rachel, a different method is used. Dawn is when the bodies are found.

And a body has been found.

The ever-diminishing numbers of residents come out of their rooms hesitantly. Some of them wonder if THEY are dead. Others wonder WHO will be dead.

But one doesn’t wonder at all.

One smirks.

But they all act equally surprised.

His head caught in a car door, vecna looks like he hardly struggled. He HAD been sick, he claimed. So maybe he had no energy to escape. His thick neck was sturdy enough to bend the car door, if not the actual car-frame. The townies had never seen, “murder by car door” before.

Vecna’s mouth was open. His four remaining good teeth clamped on a piece of bubble gum. His eyeballs bulging, more red than white. The only thing pretty about it, is that it is pretty gruesome.

VECNA IS DEAD. HE WAS Dutch de Vanderzee, a Vanilla Townie.

It is day.
You may post.

[dargorygel]

(And thanks for all the fish... and the karma) /s

[Maniac]

Rip Vecna.

##vote Ghug ##end

I’m bored now and need to know.

[rdrivera2005]

I think we should not end this fast.

I still want Ghug to answer my question about his item.

[ghug]

I think we should not end this fast.

I still want Ghug to answer my question about his item.

Agreed. I'm hoping to have some time to dive deep on the two of you this evening, and I don't like Maniac trying to force the issue.

I tried to protect Jamie the night Bona died. Thought I'd have some fun with the last scum since you asked me at night.

[Jamiet99uk]

I have exciting news.

GHUG is not infected with Alien DNA.

[rdrivera2005]

I think we should not end this fast.

I still want Ghug to answer my question about his item.

Agreed. I'm hoping to have some time to dive deep on the two of you this evening, and I don't like Maniac trying to force the issue.

I tried to protect Jamie the night Bona died. Thought I'd have some fun with the last scum since you asked me at night.

I confess I expect this answer, but want to give you a chance, just in case.

[Jamiet99uk]

Rd, Maniac, why do y'all think jasnah was killed?

I’m more interested in why you killed Kgray D1. Were you worried she’d rumbled you early or did you execute her for shits and giggles?

Maniac, why did you side-step this question?

[rdrivera2005]

I think we should not end this fast.

I still want Ghug to answer my question about his item.

Agreed. I'm hoping to have some time to dive deep on the two of you this evening, and I don't like Maniac trying to force the issue.

I tried to protect Jamie the night Bona died. Thought I'd have some fun with the last scum since you asked me at night.

I confess I expect this answer, but want to give you a chance, just in case.

A chance to play with scum, I mean.
I will try do dog a bit tomorrow, but we should end before the 24h mark.

[ghug]

I think we should not end this fast.

I still want Ghug to answer my question about his item.

Agreed. I'm hoping to have some time to dive deep on the two of you this evening, and I don't like Maniac trying to force the issue.

I tried to protect Jamie the night Bona died. Thought I'd have some fun with the last scum since you asked me at night.

I confess I expect this answer, but want to give you a chance, just in case.

Yeah, I probably should have thought through my story a little more thoroughly. Alas.

[Maniac]

Rd, Maniac, why do y'all think jasnah was killed?

I’m more interested in why you killed Kgray D1. Were you worried she’d rumbled you early or did you execute her for shits and giggles?

Maniac, why did you side-step this question?

I don’t know why Jasnah was killed. Perhaps scum wanted her walkie-talkie without her disclosing it had gone missing so they could listen in to our chat. If so the only remaining unclear who didn’t already have access to the chat is Ghug.

Whilst you may think I sidestepped Ghug question, I made a valid point that Ghug may well have shot Kgray out the gate for fun.

[ghug]

Part 1: rdrivera2005

This is mostly just going to be evidence. I'll draw grander conclusions once I've gone through both of them.

Day 1:

• rd appears to not be mentioned by anyone but brain and Bob prior to page 66, which is just odd however you cut it. brain lists him in a uselessly gigantic group of potential aliens early on, and then votes him later. Bob null reads him. celaph and jasnah are the first additional mentions, and they're both in response to brain.

• On Chaqa: "Protecting your scum meta when you are town should get you DKed without regrets."

• On kgray: "Scum Kgray sometimes talk even more then town Kgray."

• On Chaqa (10 pages after the last one): "I tend to agree. But he is obviously not the kill today and I just don't get why people are voting him. I can't see no item that scum might have that is such a threat for town to warrant a D1 kill. And he is even offering himself to be the D2 kill, an offer that we should probably take..." I'm not a fan of the inconsistency.

• Responds to brain positing that scum shot kgray (lol in retrospect), agreeing that it makes sense

• No other interactions with scum D1. Misses EoD.

Night 1:

• Aplogizes for not voting, and says this about the Chaqa wagon: "I suspect any vet player that pushed Chaqa's kill. Chaqa as scum lurks, buss all his team to win, use real life excuses and get caught, but don't do this kind of shenanigan. I can't believe players like Vecna, Jamiet and Brain really believe Chaqa was scum doing a weird play that will result in lot of pressure D2 just for the giggs. Ghug get a bit of a pass because he moved at the end when it was clearly between Chaqa and Jamiet."

• brain: "I feel that the self important scum memtality would be the secretary who the maf team loses the most utility with upon death. therefore the most self important lurkers are macca, thamrick, celaph, HR, and rdrivera". tham is the only known scum in this list. It's worth noting that the secretary is the last scum.

Day 2:

• Opens the day with a Vecna push.

• brain calls out rivera's absence.

• Scumreads worcej and Fox along with Vecna. Votes Fox. Is also fine with the damo wagon, but thinks it's lazy.

• Fox calls the case against him flimsy, and calls out rivera specifically. Brain replies to this with "Your wagon is pretty random ngl"

• Agrees with Vecna that Bunny's flying under the radar.

• Prods brain on not answering a question about Vecna.

• Calls out and scumreads worcej for wanting to kill lfischl.

• Comes back near EoD to complain a bit more about the lfischl kill.

Night 2:

• Complains about Macca (now clear) townreading worcej and brain.

• brain: "so my scumteam at this point is thamrick, fox, damo, maniac, celaph, rdrivera. any in there could be alien or scum" (only known scum is tham)

• brain goes on to alien read rd.

• brain calls out rd for scumreading worcej but not voing for him.

\

Day 3:

• Congratulates the PRs and item holders on catching scum, votes Thamrick.

• Tries to start a Fox wagon after the thamrick scan correction.

• Grumpily argues with Vecna for a while on reads. Vecna calls this out as scummy.

• Doesn't think scum would jail thamrick, and doesn't want to kill thamrick for being a potential alien. Kinda like this reaction, even though obviously at a high level he is trying to keep us from killing mafia.

• brain posts a giant read list that I subsequently realized was the one he pasted from a previous game. Let this be a warning to those who go bot hunting.

• Also willing to kill Damo or worcej. Scumreads folks for wanting to kill thamrick.

• Not around for the hammer. Ends the day on Fox.

Night 3:

Good job catching Brain.

I don't get why he just suicided. Even if Fox is scum one of them could get credit when the other flips.

Anyway, I don't believe Tham and Fox are town at this moment. Maniac I am not that sure.

• Suddenly he doesn't feel like defending tham anymore.

• Argues with Vecna about item claiming.

• Wants Jamie to scan thamrick. Doubles down on the argument that scum wouldn't jail tham, which I guess means that he thinks tham is the alien now. What changed?

Day 4:

• Quick to suggest that he knows Jamie's wrong about a theory regarding Jasnah being jailed N2. This was easily provable because she posted in the game thread that night, but in retrospect he's hinting knowledge of the satellite QT. rd's done similar things as town PR before, so I kinda like this.

• Expresses frustration with people trying to second-guess GM actions, which is fair, but it's in response to Fox being item thieved, and I could see it as frustration about losing a miskill opportunity.

• Continues pushing a thamrick-as-alien/can't-be-mafia narrative.

Night 4:

• Refuses to participate in nighttime read lists.

Day 5:

• The whole Jamie scan/Vecna kit happens. A lot of people talking about it. No worcej in sight.

• Votes for damo when we think he was scanned alien. Votes for celaph once Jamie comes clean.

• Talks a fair amount of alien mechanics.

• Mafia reads Fox and either ghug or worcej.

• Gets annoyed at Maniac for outing the satellite QT. Lots of questions about that.

Night 5:

• Encourages scum not to kill him or Jamie. Then changes his mind and says it might be OK if he's killed.

My reads, just in case I didn't survive the night.

Alien: Ghug or Damo, in this order.

Scum: Fox and Worcej.

Day 6:

• Accuses me of being alien for the read mishap.

• Various alien mechanics stuff. Taunts Bob a little bit when he gets frustrated by the "everyone vote Bob" plan.

Night 6:

• Tells worcej he doesn't understand why he outed himself to get Damo killed.

• Plays with the idea of killing worcej tomorrow out of spite.

Day 7:
Just discussion about ending on Bob.

N8-present has just been hammering worcej and should be fresh enough on our minds.

[Maniac]

@ghug - rdriveria May have been annoyed with me for several reasons. But he outted the walkie-talkie QT thread.

[ghug]

Part 2: Maniac

Day 1:

• Opens with a silly post criticizing the wording of Jamie's opening post.

• Scumreads me for townreading him for that post.

• Switches back to Jamie over his reaction to the opening post. He's the fifth vote here, giving Jamie a two vote lead, but there aren't any scum counterwagons.

• Bunny doesn't mind the Jamie wagon because "Maniac and others have interesting reasons"

• Returns at EoD to push the Jamie wagon a bit.

Night 1:

• Doesn't think Chaqa's death tells us much. Calls out Fox for not voting for a lead wagon.

Day 2:

• Doubles down on the Fox scumread. Currently townreads Jamie. Thinks D1 was TvTvT.

• brain posts a big bunch of things on Maniac. The gist is that he's scum because he PR hunted for Jamie. Votes him.

• brain then votes damo a page later with no series of explaining posts because he "feel[s] stronger about this."

• brain: "I wanna kill damo and maniac and ifischl. i need a fuckin flamethrower"

• brain wants to use the herb on Maniac

• Bunny chooses this moment to poke his head out of his little Bunny hole and ask brain why Maniac.

• Long Maniac post where he @s various people. Brain is the only scum here, and it's just a snarky response to his PR-hunting accusation.

Night 2:

• brain still scumreads Maniac. Gives a whole list of scumreads and then harps on Maniac some.

• worcej scumreads Maniac and tham for lurking. "If I die this phase, I say D3 needs to be ghug vs Vecna vs a lurker in Maniac or Tham."

• Maniac assures us that he isn't jailed.

Day 3:

• Votes Bunny with everyone else.

• Seems upset that Bob's gun was used on Bunny instead of the daykill. Votes Fox.

• Brain claims he camped with Maniac.

• Maniac rejects and votes brain.

Night 3:

• Is asked for three scumreads, lists Fox thrice. Notes later that thamrick seems mechanically caught (after missing most of the day) and that he doesn't have any other reads.

Day 4:

• Votes thamrick, openly acknowledging the awkwardness around reading into a GM mistake. Says he'd also be happy with Fox. Doesn't want to alien hunt yet.

• Is confident tham
  is Mafia and not alien.

• worcej chimes in in agreement when Jamie points out how little Maniac is posting.

• Suggests we'll likely have to kill Jamie at some point because he''s a likely infection target.

• Suddenly flips and says killing tham is stupid.

• Votes Fox.

• Votes tham under protest.

Night 4:

• Congratulates the group, admits wrongness cheerily.

• "Van we not discuss tomorrow's kill. It#s giving too much info to scum and the alien"

Day 5:

• Votes damo believing he has alien DNA.

• Moves to celaph when we learn the truth of the scan.

• Gets mad at rd for disclosing that they have sat phones (I think I got this backwards in part 1). Does a lot of thinking aloud. Suggests killing from an outside pool that includes worcej, but not Bob, Fox, or damo. Clarifies that he didn't list damo because he thought Jamie had said he had queued his next scan on damo, but doesn't answer about the other two.

• Doesn't think Bob is alien because he shot Bunny.

• Much more active in alien mech discussions than the previous days.

• Really doesn't think celaph is alien. Self votes to push his point (that we should kill in the unknowns).

• worcej calls out damo and Maniac for not wanting to flip celaph.

Night 5:

• Remains indignant about the fact that we killed celaph. If asked to choose, wanted ghug or worcej

• Suggests that the item thief sacrifice themself (I think he's the first to do so.

• Kill order: ghug > Fox > worcej = Vecna

• Maniac is worcej's top alien read.

Day 6:

• Gets excited about the lack of deaths. Votes damo.

• damo clears him of being alien at this point.

• Various mech discussions. Culminates in concluding that the mafia would most likely have targeted Bob, and suggesting the everyone vote Bob thing.

• Accuses Vecna of being mafia for not voting Bob.

• Isn't willing to townclear Fox.

• Insists that we owe worcej a kill in exchange for outing damo, but that it can't be a PR.

• Worcej responds to this, saying that Fox and jamie are the options. Could be theater or actually opposite teams conducting diplomacy.

• Thinks that worcej is doing this because Bob is the secretary.

Night 6:

• Continues to believe worcej was saving his scumbuddy Bob.

• Worcej "From my perspective, if you listened to Maniac (who did figure it out) then we were screwed."

• Feels that we had a deal with scum and they reneged, so we have to kill worcej next and throw to the alien. This feels a bit performative to me, since he told worcej they had no detail during the day when worcej was insisting on a daykill of Jamie or Fox.

• Says he'll hammer worcej if Jamie or Fox dies.

Day 7:

• Opens the day with a Bob vote.

• Various discussions about hammering. Wants to find the final scum.

N7-present has just been hammering worcej and should be fresh enough on our minds.

[ghug]

@ghug - rdriveria May have been annoyed with me for several reasons. But he outted the walkie-talkie QT thread.

Yeah, caught that in the reread of you. Definitely annoyed though.

[ghug]

Part 3: Conclusions

So, I seem to be the kill du jour. I'm not entirely sure why. It seems like I got alien read, primarily for a little brainfart in a read list and POE, and then that's transferred itself into a mafia read, since my two compatriot nonclears weren't alien candidates and as such weren't getting pressure. I imagine there's a bit of my early game activity decline playing into it too, but I was still posting more than the other two, and it's not like it continued. If there's more to it than that, go ahead and correct me. The fact that this game devolved into a giant extraterrestrial-mechanical slog early on and only just finally dug its way out has made it thoroughly unenjoyable for me, and losing to a scumteam we had dead-to-rights from day 3 on because we haven't been able to hunt them since would be the cherry on top, so I'm going to take this opportunity to scumhunt and assail you all with more words than you want to read to try to save us.

What I can say in my defense is that a lot of things don't make sense if I'm scum. One is the nightkills. If I were scum, Jamie would have died N1. Take my EoD voting, along with posts like the following, and it''s pretty clear in retrospect that I knew he was a PR:

I listed brain last because he shoots way up the scumlist for his voting if you or Jamie turns out to be scum.

I feel pretty good about Jamie being town right now, so I prefer flipping you over him, but I imagine he's going to be sorted out one way or the other fairly soon.

I don''t leave PRs alive. Likewise, the jasnah kill was highly questionable with Bona, Jamie, and Macca alive. The fact that I had the triage kit (or my team did, if you think I'm lying), means that we could have been reasonably confident in getting our kills to go through, and I'm the sort of scum player that kills clears. That kill does make sense if there was something in the sat QT that clued scum into a PR read, maybe.

Beyond that, there's no fucking way worcej claims scum like that if I'm his teammate. It was a terrible and unnecessary play, and even if you want to believe I can't control him (which is probably a fair assumption), it was pretty widely telegraphed that I was the preferred kill once Fox was cleared, so willfully outing himself there would have greatly reduced his chances of winning if I were a teammate.

There are also other little things, like my Vecna push when he was widely townread, or my push to kill celaph over thamrick that I just wouldn't do as scum, but that's getting close enough to WIFOM purgatory that I can't really expect any of you to take it too seriously.

As for the other two, I find it kinda funny that I spent the whole early game townreading Maniac strongly, and then he's apparently gone from widely scumread to widely towread since he started to behave more scummily. The one big blemish on his record is the whole attempt to wagon Bob and then ensuing interactions he had with worcej. I was initially inclined to townread that whole thing, but rereading it now I'm ambivalent at best. The interactions with worcej are very performative, and he was willing to flip on a dime from "no deal" to "we had a deal and you broke it, so we're throwing to the alien" to "OK, time to kill Bob. That said, there's a perfectly reasonable townie explanation ("Maniac being Maniac"), and I feel like most of his other play falls into that bucket. Maniac getting scumread in the early game is usually a decent sign that he's town, and he always felt like he was actually trying to do things when he has been here. I''d also be pretty inclined to read his approach to MILO here as pretty townie from anyone else, as scum is going to be way more concerned with image, but that's a little blunted with Maniac because he knows it's all about image here regardless. I suspect he's thinking about this more than he's letting on, or at least pretending to if he is scum.

rd's response is more what I'd expect here from scum. He's saying the right things about what we need to do and then waiting to see where things fall. When I look at the rest of his game, I see some milquetoast hunting in the first few days, a lot of back and forth with brain that mysteriously evaporated when brain fell off the wagon, a constant scumread of worcej, and no interactions at all with Bunny and thamrick. The worcej scumread is super weird, too. It's always second or third in a list, and there's never any elaboration, push, or questioning. It's a textbook lazy bus. There are things I do like from him, but he's entirely capable of competently fooling people, and he ends up undoing many of the bigger ones. The brain and worcej pushes fell flat when it actually came down to it, and his reaction to the whole thamrick scan was to push against killing him, which on the surface is something I think town are more likely to do. Once brain died, though, he was all on board the "thamrick must be the alien" train, and he spent time pushing Jamie to scan thamrick, which would have both preserved tham for a day while we waited and given him a good way to back out of that read and into a full townread.

##VOTE rd

[Maniac]

I’m not surprised that Ghug has voted rdriveria whilst leaving himself room to flip to me.

I don’t buy the “Scum!Ghug doesn’t let PRs live” line. Perhaps Ghug could make a case for this in a vanilla game, but Jamie was exposed early in a game with a powerful third party and his role was just as important to scum as it was to us. We should also remember that Ghug isn’t the Gunman and scum wasn’t a bunch of newbies that would bow down to Ghug’s demand to kill Jamie.

I can see some merit in Ghug’s argument that he would’ve tried to dissuade worceJ from claiming scum, but as Ghug rightly points out worceJ has a mind of his own and may have ignore Ghug’s pleadings. I do agree with Ghug that it was poor scum play from WorceJ.

I think Ghug suggestion that Jasnah was killed because of something she said in the walkie-talkie QT is just him throwing shade onto the other two non-clears.

Overall I’m not convinced by anything Ghug has said. I want to be alive to the fact I could be tunnelling, but I don’t think I am. I’m happy to take primary responsibility for Ghug’s flip.

[Jamiet99uk]

Day 5:

• The whole Jamie scan/Vecna kit happens. A lot of people talking about it. No worcej in sight.

• Votes for damo when we think he was scanned alien. Votes for celaph once Jamie comes clean.

• Talks a fair amount of alien mechanics.

• Mafia reads Fox and either ghug or worcej.

• Gets annoyed at Maniac for outing the satellite QT. Lots of questions about that.

Maniac is correct.

This part is not accurate.

Rdrivera even acknowledges that it was he, not Maniac, who outted the Satellite Phone QT:

Also, if we are lucky and Celaph is Alien we can get back to going after scum. I still think Fox is the most likely and Worcej or Ghug the second one.

Maniac could be the Secretary but he isn't Item Thief as he was in Sat QT since D1 with me and Jasnah (Alien already has this info so I decided to disclose it). Anyway, not my first choice to flip as he has 50% less chance to be scum.

Comment on this, Ghug?

[Jamiet99uk]

@Rdrivera:
Let's have your thoughts today.

As the one remaining clear, all three of you should be trying to persuade me.

[rdrivera2005]

@Rdrivera:
Let's have your thoughts today.

As the one remaining clear, all three of you should be trying to persuade me.

Yes, I know. Anyway, if you have a question to me, just throw it.

I confess I liked the Ghug work today, just didn't like his conclusions. One of the reasons I was Alien/scum reading Ghug is his lack of engagement (not post volume, but tone, almost a lack of emotions), something I expect more from non-town Ghug.

The point about Maniac pushing the Bob vote as Alien and the interaction with Worcej is something I had on the back of my mind and that could point to Maniac as scum, this is probably the only thing that make feel still a bit unsure.

I don't like the Ghug wifon on NK targets. Jasnah choice for example, looks a lot more Ghug's choice then Maniac, why kill someone who will push Vecna with other town (me) in the next day. Only reason for Maniac to kill Jasnsh is some crumb in the QT, but I didn't see any, or something on EMCs deleted posts, but I didn't read them.