Well, I was sort of hoping to put **sachertorte ** on the spot, but he is apparently not here this evening.
Here’s what I was going to ask him:
Is it possible that the unexplained fire in the game text comes from a LUTHA member? **crys75 ** posted a PM that describes her 3rd party role as non-hostile. Is there any reason to believe that is the case for all LUTHA?
If the fire comes from a third party member that is not LUTHA, that would mean we’d have at least 6 third party players. Maybe this theoretical 6th person (an arsonist?) has a win condition of killing a certain number of players or killing certain roles or who knows what.
But the thought occurred to me tonight that maybe there is a crazed member of the cult or a nutty cult leader. A cult leader might even already know who is in the cult. That player might be trying to hasten along the wincon game for LUTHA by killing SK or arson style. The other clueless cult members would not necessarily even need to know.
Of course the “fire” in the text color could just be a red herring. Maybe no fire player exists. But if there is a third party fire person on the loose, why couldn’t they be LUTHA?
It also seems possible that the members of LUTHA, who seem to have unique role names, “Second Deacon” for example, might have different powers.
So I think I may have been a tad hasty in waving off the problem of LUTHA.
The original claim was very odd. It was unforced and described a role that did not seem to work properly: only being allowed to find a single fellow member looked like a very nasty and unnecessary limitation. To me it looked more like a fake role (yes, I think it quite likely that scum have been given fake third party roles).
The weird linkage with brewha also did not make sense. As I said in my vote post, “I have doubts about Crys’s claim, the necessity for the claim and the strong desire to keep brewha alive.”
So Crys’s reveal could also give some info on brewha.
I confirmed this vote in post 712. I think that is pretty clear as to why I was still happy with a Crys lynch.
Now we have confirmation from sachertorte that the cult exists. We don’t yet know if whether they are hostile, but there is no rush to find out. They are almost certainly not scum, so I suggested that the vig shoot elsewhere.
When one turns up dead we will then have more information on them. If there is no indication of hostile/non hostile then we are in a bit of a pickle. But if they are indeed non hostile then they can help town.
Thinking more about the cult, I think it is unlikely that they would be hostile.
Consider: a group of 5 with a shared win condition that can steal the win. That is one heck of a burden for town to overcome. Killing off 14 scum is hard enough, now there are 5 cultists that need to be taken care of as well. Yes, they would also be a threat to scum, but scum would be happy to use the lynch to take them out.
I’ll stick my neck out: I am going to regard the cult of LUTHA as non hostile, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Also, a suggestion to the cultists: Crys has already said that she will use her investigation on sachertorte toNight. This will confirm both of them. Since you can only find one member of your cult, I suggest that you keep your investigation in reserve and not look for anyone toNight. You may need it later for cross-confirmation purposes.
I got that a bit wrong: sachertorte confirmed himself with his breadcrumbs, and he has confirmed Crys. So they are already both confirmed (to me anyway), so Crys also does not need to use her investigation toNight.
If the cult behaves as another scum team, then yes, the game would seem to be imbalanced with 19 scum. But - it’s not a team of 19, it’s 7,7,5 - so while it is still possible the cult are win stealers, their win condition couldn’t be materially less difficult than the published wincons for town or scum - otherwise it would be imbalanced.
We do not know for certain the alignment and wincon of the cult - so we cannot say that crys investigating sach a) actually takes place b) actually gives the result they are publicaly stating. While I think in all likelihood they are being truthful, they are not “confirmed” until we have unequivocal evidence. Three mods? three scum teams? When we eventually get nearer the end game, if the wincon of the cult had not been reliabily established, then we will need to lynch one of them to fine out .
Confirmed non-Townies? Until we know for certain that they’re non-hostile, that should buy them the best seat in the house to the new gallows opening, if you ask me. This is the perfect usage for the second lynch, in my book. (Although I’d really rather that we didn’t have the opportunity to use it)