I’ve been thinking a little bit about the way cultists have revealed this game.
Crys’s revealed in Day Two was 100% unforced, ostensibly to save brewha.
Sachertorte claimed later in the day, ostensibly to confirm Crys and also for the purpose of gaining town’s trust. But Crys wasn’t in danger at the time. She was a far second-place in the vote tally and was not in danger of even being a second lynch. This claim was unforced.
Koldanar’s claim today is also unforced. There’s no way in hell that cookies doesn’t get the lynch today. The stuff about the GLaDOS switch isn’t nearly enough to derail that.
So do the cultists have a condition of some kind that requires them to come out into the open? Like I said about cookies, it’s impossible to really speculate on wincons when there are a million not-unlikely possibilities. But something feels weird.*
I also feel oddly about the (Non-hostile) tag on their alignment. It feels a little, I dunno, on the nose? I think this has been brought up already.
On Koldanar specifically:
The Day 4 breadcrumbing is weird. That’s really late to leave that sort of trail and I’m not sure what to make of it. The pace at which he’s given us information also feels weird. The initial claim-that-kind-of-wasn’t, the bits and pieces of copy/pasting to reveal his role, only telling us who he redirected but not where, etc.
I do think Koldanar is cult, but the more we learn about them, the more I think their win condition has to be more than “have at least one survivor at the end of the game.”
Five cultists, all (or at least most) of whom are power roles? The scum teams only started with seven each and they have to earn an exclusive win! No, there’s something else up with these guys.
I could accept Crys’s initial claim as a poor choice, but not sachertorte coming into the open shortly thereafter. For a group of survivors, it would have made more sense to let her live or die on her own case.
This was on Day 2. We’d just lost a couple of power roles. If I was a cultist I would have been thinking that town was looking like the slower horse right out the gate.
None of this quite adds up. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where a bunch of the pieces have been cut imperfectly.
*If you put a “speculate or die” gun to my head, I would say that cultists either must reveal, must be lynched, or some combination of both.