November 27, 1696 -

It is now past midnight and you have dug a hole and buried Sean. You all stand in silence over his grave and remember him with fondness.

A lot of people called him"Sean-O" because there is another "Shawn" (Shawn Henderson) who lives in the village, though he's currently in Nashua, of course.

Sean-O came to the area of Oakwood almost 8 years ago to see if it might be the sort of community that he felt was worth settling down in for a lifetime. He was hoping to find a nice place with a decent-sized clearing where he could graze and breed and raise cattle and provide their sustenance to a town or village that did not yet have much of them, as no one else here ever had more than 2 at any time, and even those people were few and far between, as the thick woods are not naturally conducive to the grazing space cattle need. Sean found a perfect spot on the slightest of sloped hills here in Oakwood Village and made it a lovely home for himself.

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You all make your ways to your homes in silence, uncertain what the Night ahead holds.

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It is now NIGHT -

there is NO POSTING at NIGHT

DAYBREAK (there is NO POSTING during Daybreak)

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November 27, 1696 -

The next morning you all make your ways, once again, to The Community Home.

This gathered scene is nothing like the previous times. You are all mostly quiet and keeping to yourselves. There are some exchanges of words but, nothing beyond the basic necessary common courtesies. There is no meal being prepared by anyone, and the villagers are noticeably weary as you wait to see who all arrives this morning, or rather, who doesn't.

After a little time more chit-chat begins to take place and some semblance of working together starts to form, enough so at least that finally someone rises from their seat and speaks.

"Okay, it looks like this is all of us, let's see who is missing." A quick glance around shows that a few villagers are missing.

Emma Hess, Laura Jennings, and Dan Evans are all not present.

The group decides to head first to Emma's to see if anything can be found out about her fate.

As they approach Emma's home they see what remains of her lying in a small area between some trees not far from the steps to her front porch. It's a grotesque pile of blood and bone and cloth, and you all work together to scoop up the remains into a wheelbarrow and then you work on digging her grave. First you must clear a spot of snow and expose the ground, and then with the ground being hard and frozen it takes quite some effort from all of you together to dig the hole for her burial.

After the arduous task you stand above her grave in silence and reflect on her.

You all knew her to be a writer, which is a rare thing in this era, especially for a woman. She stayed because this is her home, because he don't want to be anywhere else, and most of all because she was curious about what is going on and wanted to be a witness to all that happens and document it for history.

She was fascinated by the situation here and intended to write about it in two different ways.

First, she worked on documenting the factual happenings of what unfolded during these months and was even taking minutes during the meetings. This way if no one was alive after it's all over, there would at least still be a partial account of what happened.

She couldn't help but be extremely curious about what killed Julie Ives and she wanted to know all the details involved, no matter how gruesome. She did feel her loss and cared for her very much, but the curiosity of it all overwhelmed all other senses and emotions most of the time for Emma. What happened?! She had to know! She was willing do anything she could to find out anything about what was going on here, even if that meant putting her life in danger.

Second, she was working on writing a bunch of fictional fantastical events that used the events here as a basis. The moment she heard about Julie Ives being massacred into almost nothingness, her imagination took hold and had been running wild ever since. She had a dozen different ideas about what most certainly didn't happen to Julie, and she wrote down some starter ideas for stories and looked forward to coming up with more and elaborating and refining it all as the months went on.

She was the youngest person who stayed behind, at 17, and while that is not so super-young (for this time period, it's pretty mature), she was still not as experienced or as grown-up as the rest of the people who stayed. You all ranged from proud to surprised to confused about her staying behind. You all know she really would have loved to hear what every single one of you knows or thinks about the situation.

She knew that this is a special place, and she considered you all like her family. Her parents and older brother left to stay in Nashua, but they could not convince her to go no matter how much they begged, demanded, pleaded, or prayed that she would. She was a strong-willed young woman.

She could do bit of everything there is to do around here, too, and had been found to be a very helpful hand and contributor to the community because of her ability to quickly pick up on whatever she was shown. She was generally a bit smarter than most. She could farm, and had a little plot of crops of your own, but she spent a lot of her time helping others with their bigger farms and animals (of which she didn't keep any herself.) She could handle all kinds of animals with knowledge, she was a decent hunter, and she could even cook and sew decently well. She liked to play the guitar and mandolin, and could also play the fiddle a bit if it the mood struck her (she has one of each of these instruments in her home.)

Wherever she was she'd be helping on any given day in the village, contributing something worthwhile and was appreciated by all. She loved to get all the experiences she could, for the experiences themselves, certainly, but also because it helped with her writing.

She loved the community and all that live here. She was a loyal and dedicated member of the community.

Emma Hess is DEAD. She was the Village Snoop.

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After the burial and some appropriate moments of silence you all somberly mount your horses and make your way to Laura's house. There, at the base of the steps to her front porch lies what remains of Laura. Another pile of flesh and bone and cloth.

Almost automatically, you all set to doing the exact thing you just did at Emma's, and bury Laura, and again, have similar moments of silence and reflection after the task is done and you all stand around.

She was in her 20s and had a variety of skills and passions, including cooking, baking, quilting, singing, and playing the flute. However, what she was most well-known for, as was her father and both his parents before him, was being an animal doctor. Her father was one of the original founders here in Oakwood and he brought Laura here with his wife when she were about 5 or 6 years old (she was never exactly sure), to help establish the village. She had many memories of the development of the community and how it has grown over the years.

Her mother died about fifteen years ago, and her father died two winters ago. The whole community mourned his death with her, he was loved greatly by all. He was a loving and knowledgeable man who taught her everything he could. As much as she thought the village would benefit from his presence in this dire situation, she was glad he didn't have to see such horrible things happen to the community he loved and cared for so deeply.

She worked with animals her whole life. She was the local animal care-taker. That mostly means that when animals are sick or behaving oddly or need help in any way she did what she could to help. Sometimes people would bring the animals to her, but she preferred to go to wherever an animal in need might be. It is best to see them in their natural environment (it also reduces their stress and possibility for aggravating injuries to not move them if it can be helped.)

Most of her time was spent going around to everyone's homes and farms and checking up on all the well-being and general health of any and all livestock, pets, horses, or whatever other animals people might want ger to have a look at for whatever number of reasons (from a young boy's frog that has a sore throat to pregnant animals whose births are abnormal in some way, which happens regularly enough, and all things in-between.) She also helped with a good number of animal births that were perfectly normal, but most people and animals tend to their own births perfectly fine without her assistance.

This was her home, and she figured you would die here, just like her parents. With that, she saw no reason to flee when a potential danger arose for the village, and on top of that, she figured her animal-doctoring skills might possibly be useful, as well as her general knowledge and intelligent insight. So she stayed. She was a loyal and dedicated community member.

Laura Jennings is DEAD. She was the Village Animal Doctor.

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Exhausted from the arduous digging and heartbroken from the painful losses, you all press on to Dan Evans' home. There, you find no sign of him, but you find a letter.

"To my beloved friends,

I am not much with words, but I hope they will suffice to give you all what you need.

I have left you, but I never truly was a part of you.

I was a werewolf, but being so pained me greatly. I happened upon an opportunity I never dared allow myself dream: to have my affliction removed, and so I did. I am no longer a werewolf, but I can no longer stay among you. I hope you all understand.

I care for you all deeply, and wish Oakwood Village the best future. Stay strong my friends.

With love,
Dan"

Daniel (Dan) Evans is DEAD. He was a Werewolf.

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You all make your way make to the community home in silence.

The villagers break their melancholic silence and begin discussing how to proceed.

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It is now:

MORNING-

players may post, but MAY NOT VOTE during this stage

...

empty post

so the Day starts on a new page

for those who use the 50-count pages, anyway

-------- this portion of post written in night --------
SKREEEEEEEEEEE

------- this portion of post written in daybreak --------
what is happening this gamestate makes 0 sense aaaaaaa

17 players, 7 remain, 4 dead wolves, we're still here.

Town apparently has roles like "worrier", "snoop", and "animal doctor". wtf does even any of those are whut.

Bodies dropping like crazy.

Somebody here is a serial killer.

I think everybody should just spill everything right now.

I fully expect to be the lynch today, I've played a horrible game. It seems I can't get anything right and I'm easily swayed by scum.

I'm not scum though, I am a normal (basic?) villager.

What I don't get is why are there so many kills at night that all look like werewolf kills? With 4 dead werewolves I can't see there being more than one left, but I've been wrong most of the game so don't look to me for any sound advice.

here, have some love. alas, links not allowed or I'd send you cheetos and porn.

fwiw, at that point I was shooting you down mostly b/c I wanted to keep the focus on Lift and I wasn't holding my breath you were going to make a compelling case, in much the same way I feel like I shot back at Brasas case on Nacho. Lift was the surest thing on the table and I was trying to shut down distractions.

Well, I think there are a fairly small subset of options given the fact we're still alive. So it makes >0 sense, even if it's not as clear as it should be for 4 scum and 5 town flips.

____

My own process at nightfall was actually to go back and read myself, partly because I was involved in 80% of what was happening anyway, and also to figure out how I went from positive that Lift was the closest tie to Dess, to whatever the hell I was doing at EOD.

That led me to Brasas, despite my EOD comment, and yeah, the strongest knocks on him were that he defended Dess as a "usual lurker" when that's clearly not true - though arguably might seem truer to a newer player? And the fact that his day 1 EOD, while superficially townier than cristi's play was a good was to distance while still being in play to rely on groupthink/inertia to just push through the larger wagon at that moment (babark, 6v4)

D2 his thing was to keep talking about Lift but didn't vote him until it seemed clear the numbers weren't there to push yogs over the top.

Last night after the daybreak post I went back and re-read cristi. Still really don't see what trent is pushing there. If she's wolf she's played savvy. She could be a solo/alternate faction, but so could pretty much anyone other than arguably Tammy (has an alibi for N1, at least). I have not re-read yogs/nacho/tammy/stan/trent yet.

After reading brasas during the night I decided to wait and see the kills to see what that said about setup before proceeding, and after the kills...have some thoughts but not sure.



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I'd also like to highlight this one fairly impressive vote count at 1251:


7 villagers want to kill babark [town] -- William (QuadrAlien), Claire (cristigale), Emma (Ixamyakxim), Adam (RWarehall), Sean (Lifthrasil), ), Emily (trentonlf), Eric (yogsloth),

3 villagers want to kill Dessimu [wolf] -- Sarah (TammyTown), Marie (bler144), Dan (Brasas),

2 villagers wants to kill Lifthrasil [wolf] -- Fergus (Nachomamma8), Justin (Stanari),

2 villagers want to kill RWarehall -- Laura (babark), Craig (Bookwrym627),

1 villager wants to kill yogsloth -- Nathan (Dessimu),

For that one shining moment, other than Dess' vote on yogs (unk), all the counter-wagons were w/w/w, with Brasas distancing/busing.

[refresh]

Oh hey, you're here. Before we proceed I wanted to ask you, horrible game or no, why the urge to claim in EOD? Yogs claim was probably unnecessary but had some validity.

Also, do the D2/N2 flips make you reassess your cristi case at all?

@bler as I said before I don't think this is a role madness game and when yogs claimed vanilla town I was pointing out I was too, but to be honest I figured it was obvious when I stated that this is not a role madness game that I was vanilla town.

As for cristi, I don't know what to think anymore. My reads have been wrong most of the game on who is town or scum. I will have to go back and look at her again when I'm not on my phone.

Quick thought" massclaim today?

My gog chat seems to be broken in exciting new ways, and I was waiting for clarification on something from Drealmer.

@Drealmer - don't suppose you can cut/paste that clarification to QT since heaven knows when GOG will work?

Scenarios:

Single 4-faction plus SK
Arguments in favor:
1) while town kills are all werewolf-like, many of them have been ambiguous (Jule and Quad, both N2 kills)
2) balanced from a numbers perspective
Arguments against:
a) what do werewolves do? If they're straight goons, it seems unbalanced vis-a-vis town PRs. If they have some 1x ability or similar onstruction, it starts to look at least a bit more balanced but that's entirely hypothetical.

In this scenario we're hunting SK, which could be anyone but Tams.

Two WW pods (2x3, presumably?)
Arguments in favor:
1) Technically possible
Arguments against:
a) balanced?

If this is the setup, pod 1 looks like Dess/Brasas/Lift, and RW/x/y, maybe. First step would be going back and looking at the Dess/RW letter from D2 daybreak post. Do the pods know each other?

In any case, I think we've mined Dess connections about as far as they'll go (trent possible, I suppose), but should instead flip things and look at RW links, Imo.

Tammy still looks pretty lock-town, here.

WW Pod + other faction
1) Possible.
a) Numbers are problematic.
b) How to even hunt?

Why would WW have 4 and other faction only have 2-3? If they had 4 game would be over, except if Fox was the 4th.

In theory anyone could be scum, even Tammy, since we have no idea what the faction is.

____


In line with Stan's last comment, I think what the setup is actually hinges primarily on who killed RW/Brasas, and what exactly their role is.

So that's at least AN argument for mass claim.

The other argument being that, depending on setup and # of N3 kills, this might theoretically be LYLO/MYLO. Though I still tend to think this is pro....bably 4 wolves + SK.

The other thing of note is that babark/doc's role flip, which while not surprising after Lift's flip, does seem to have something to say about who the role protected against. Maybe.

The second wolf flavor kill though...

Assuming I've sussed your brainwave, you mean it speaks pretty clearly to some sort of "werewolf-curer"?

Side note, i think with babs' flip in the bag, I'm going to start assuming Quad was watcher rather than bodyguard.

Yeah, I admit I should've looked at that more closely. It probably speaks to multi-pods, since town would seem pretty strong v. a single 4-wolf pack (doc/cop/vigx2/purifier/watcher) unless they have some serious abilities to offset.

Team of 5 maybe, but hard to explain the kills then, so maybe 2x3 is most likely and full claim is unwise?