Alicornutopia

Narratively speaking, it makes sense that she would go into witness protection immediately after publicly declaring herself a traitor to the mafia and giving us information, however sparse and unhelpful that information may have been. Game-wise, I'm not sure what makes sense but the fact that a witness protection mechanic apparently exists is evidence in favour of her having been onto something. I'm tentatively willing to conclude that the mafia she spoke of does exist, whether or not there may also be other threats around, and I'm tentatively willing to conclude that there are probably five of them.

So we'd better get the fuck on this before they kill the rest of us.

What now?

Tamien wrote:

I don't think she was pulled for her being unsporting, I think she was pulled because it would be game breakery to leave her in given what had happened. But actually telling us this would violate opsec, which is why she didn't tell us.

In any case, the point is likely moot. I was hoping to find out her identity once she died so that we could have a clue as to what kind of mafia we were facing, and I was expecting the mafia to hill her last night, but... apparently no such luck.

this is confusing. i don't think Aestrix would have been unsporting though, it doesn't seem like her. so it's probably something else.

tau, why do you think Daniel was targeted? I don't really remember many posts from him from day 1. Only 4 posts, all on this page http://alicorn.elcenia.com/board/viewto ... a&start=70

If leaving her in would be game-breakery then *creating the role* in the first place would be game-breakery because it's not hard to guess that she *might* claim right away. I'm a little more confident in our gods than that.

tau wrote:I think she was pulled because it would be game breakery to leave her in given what had happened. But actually telling us this would violate opsec, which is why she didn't tell us.

My problem is that I don't think Alicorn would create a game that was so easily broken.
We only have the word of Aestrix that Alicorn had to as her not to spill.

Shoal wrote:this is confusing. i don't think Aestrix would have been unsporting though, it doesn't seem like her. so it's probably something else.

tau, why do you think Daniel was targeted? I don't really remember many posts from him from day 1. Only 4 posts, all on this page http://alicorn.elcenia.com/board/viewto ... a&start=70

I don't think Aestrix would have been unsporting, I think the game was in an uncomfortable spot and so the problem was resolved away a bit. But we're not being told, and can't know, because Alicorn is doing sane opsec. I only think it makes sense to trust her because I don't think she would have disappeared that way otherwise (what's another reasonable explanation? Even if out-of-game reasons to leave the mods have let players replace others before) but this could be a failure of imagination. It would be useful if we could trust and know for certain because we at least have information about how many mafia there are, assuming she's telling the truth. Which is why it might be useful to try and figured why what happened happened, so as to determine whether to trust her reveal more or less.

And I have no idea why DanielH was targeted, I don't know why you're asking me about that.

Whatever else may be going on, I definitely don't think the witness protection mechanic was invented on the spot this game-night. I think it was built into whatever the fuck was going on with Aestrix.

But like. Mike is right. Figuring out what's going on with Aestrix is tempting because it's confusing as hell, but it's not going to help much. She left us with two claims: There is a mafia, and there are five of them. Okay. Let's keep those in mind as likely theories that may or may not be true, and move on. Neither claim is going to help us figure out who to kill today, and we'd better kill somebody.

I can't find any precedent for Witness Protection on the Mafiascum forums. The closest I found is modkilling, which happens when someone breaks the rules or accidentally find information they shouldn't have in game.

An example for when it might be used: Last game, when I was Chelsea'd, Alicorn accidentally sent the PM informing me of my new alignment to both me and Tamien. Tamien was dead at that point, but if she had been alive? I don't know how Alicorn would have handled that. It wasn't Tamien's fault, but she still would have had information that she shouldn't have. Maybe something similar happened with Aestrix?

The wiki has an article on traitors but there seem to be a lot of different variations so it's hard to tell which we're dealing with and it could be a new dynamic that our mods made up on their own http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Traitor

Maybe Aestrix will come back to us when the time is right. We could start holding a vigil or something. if she was town-aligned then we needed her brains on our side.

preview-edit: because you're the person who was above me in the thread and because you were one of the killers last time so you might remember what kinds of reasonings you used then. don't read too much into the fact that i singled you out. last game we didn't really speculate about the night kills at all so it might be worthwhile trying to speculate on it this time. or maybe they let THE COIN decide. but maybe we can try anyway.

i'm not trying to shut down discussion on Aestrix, sorry. maybe i picked the wrong time to come in with an unrelated question.

preview-edit again: guys Alicorn just posted that Aestrix the human is in good standing.