Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham

The Game Room
3221

I’ve been pondering this all day. Here is a scenario I can see playing out with this gambit. See if you can follow my line of logic here.

**Zuma ** makes a PUI smudging MHaye.

**Cookies ** claims for **Sach ** and herself Monk status.

Idle Thoughts counterclaims that he and **Zuma ** are the Monks.

**MHaye ** states that is investigation of **Sach ** was Monk.

**Sach ** confirms he is a Monk.

**Zuma ** is nowhere to be found right now.

My theory is that **MHaye ** was converted, and Idle and Zuma know this as they are Cult. They are trying to get MHaye dunked and his status of Converted Apprentice revealed. The Cult gets another night kill, then we townies having faith that **Idle ** and **Zuma ** are the real Monks dunk **Sach ** or Cookies. A real Monk is revealed and we all go oops. There is another townie kill during the night before we can dunk **Idle ** or Zuma.

I can think of a good reason the Cult were able to pinpoint the Priest. **MHaye ** was converted and he told them who it was. Anyone else think this theory has merit? Am I completely off-base? I’m really interested in what Zuma will say when he gets in here.

3222

How so? :confused: MHaye has all of seemingly sealed my doom with the help of you and sach. zuma seemed to know or feel or see SOMETHING that made him feel MHaye was also a shady character. Mind you this was BEFORE your and my counter-claim. I don’t see how it’s shady to wonder what it was he knew or felt, especially when it’s MY possible neck on the block.

Yours, however, read plainly “read over everything carefully and then decide if you want to claim with me or reject it”.

3223

How is this any more plausible than to think that MHaye was recruited and he, sachertorte and Cookies are trying to sow enough confusion amongst the town to lead us to lynch another townie? We’ve already discussed that we could be in a lynch-or-die scenario today; if they can get enough folk to vote for a true Monk then they can swoop in and seal the deal with the whole of the Cultists voting for the same person.

3224

Yanno, that’s all well and good that you’re figuring it might be that but there’s one big hole in that theory.

IF it’s like that (what you typed) and all of that applies (I.E. I am “scum”) why wouldn’t the converted MHaye just, from the start, say zuma and I were Monks so it would look like sach and cookies making a counterclaim were the ones probably not telling the truth?

Then, of course, there’s the BIG, GAPING hole that only I know.
How else can I put it.

I AM A MONK. Mhaye is LYING! WHY, I don’t know. WHY the two claiming to be what they’re not, I don’t know. What made them think it would work, I. Don’t. Know. All I KNOW, though, is that they are NOT the Monks. I would bet everything I own on it.

Geez, Hockey. Haven’t you SEEN this before? Doens’t this seem at all familiar to you? It does to me, and painfully so. Irritatingly so. Well, not so much irritating as just frustrating to know that the only way you can be confirmed is by your own death. Which almost happened to me before.

sighs

3225

An update before I post my thoughts…

Unofficial Vote Count:

Idle Thoughts(3) - MHaye, Hockey Monkey, Pygmy Rugger
sachertorte(2) - FlyingCowOfDoom, Idle Thoughts

3226

Here’s how I currently think things have gone down over the last 3 Days.

Day 6 - fluiddruid is killed. Voted for by 2-3 players I suspect of being cultists. Also this is the day that sachertorte announces he is leaving for vacation (last post is 8/3, expects to be gone 14 days).

Night 6 - No Kill. I am more and more convinced that MHaye was succesfully recruited this night. He is unable to communicate directly with his new friends, but he can read their board at his leisure.

Day 7 - amrussell, a poor non-believer who turned up to be the Psychopath is day killed. MHaye casts a relatively safe vote (again) on sachertorte who he now knows to be a Cultist and it out of town so won’t attract much attention from other players.

Night 7 - MHaye’s first chance to share his information with the Cult. The Priest is subsequently killed. Also the plan is hatched for the Apprentice to role claim the next day if he begins to get heat. He had already gotten some attention in the past and it seemed to escalate some the previous Day.

Day 8 - MHaye gets into some trouble early on. He role claims and lists his readings. Interestingly he claims he investigated sachertorte on Night 7, even though sach is gone and has not been around, so why investigate him instead of someone who is claiming a power role? He states that sach ‘believes in Nairu’. MHaye also lists his ‘before Oracle death’ readings which are less reliable and gives away Diggit[sub]2[/sub] as ‘does not believe’, subsequently leading to his demise. MHaye is safe though because he can say ‘oh well, false reading’.

Night 8 - Having set the stage for a lynch-or-die situation, they next formulate their plan to exterminate the Monks by confusing the hell out of the town and hopefully land a True Monk in the drink the next day. The plan hinges on there being two Cultists who claim False Monk and only one True Monk left with no one to confirm his counter claim. So they go after the one known Monk, Zeriel. I think at this point the Cultists believe there to be only one Monk remaining (after Zeriel). Now, with the possibility of there being two remaining True Monks, they have a monkeywrench thrown into their machinations and we have a chance to capitalize

A few questions remain.
How can such a plan have been devised without sachertorte around to help in the planning?

Well sachertorte is a man of numbers. When sachertorte says he’s going to be gone for 2 weeks, he means 2 weeks. This means he would have returned from Vacation on the 17th. Just in time to catch up with his brethren and confirm the plan to pose as Monks. His first post back in the main thread is on the 19th.

Also, why would MHaye give a ‘Believer’ reading on sachertorte if he now knows him to be Cult?

Two possibilities: he’s relying on the trust he’s engendered and sachertorte’s absence to carry long enough that it will be too late if he is found out. Or he knows sachertorte to be the Prophet and would therefore investigate as ‘Believer’. I’m more inclined to believe the former as it would be too dangerous for the Prophet to participate in the Monk ruse.

This begs the question, why use sachertorte in the ruse at all? Could be that the cultists aren’t very many in number. Could be that MHaye did in fact investigate another of his new friends and found the Avatar among them and they have no further options.

Where does this lead us? I believe there are 5 Cultists remaining:
MHaye(recruited Apprentice)
sachertorte (claimed Monk)
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies (claimed Monk)
The Avatar
The Prophet.

I believe Pygmy Rugger is either the Avatar or the Prophet.
The final Cultist remains hidden, but I believe it to be either Kyrie Eleison or NAF1138 with Queuing coming in a distant third.

Right now my vote goes to sachertorte which by my count brings him even with Idle Thoughts

3227

Wow. Just wow.

I confess that I had been somewhat ignoring this thread over the weekend, as I expected this day would get off to a slow start, much as previous days did. That would seem not to be the case.

There’s something about this situation that just doesn’t make sense to me. But I’m loathe to say more until zuma chimes in.

I will say this though, since it does directly touch on the matter at hand: I thought sachertorte was the Apprentice until he announced his vacation. Way back when, when sachertorte proposed to divide the town into two camps for the Oracle and Apprentice, he included himself in the group that he originally proposed be investigated by the Oracle. I thought that this was tantamount to asking the Oracle to investigate him. It seemed to me that lacking any additional knowledge, he should have taken care to make sure that he himself, if he were not the Apprentice, was in the Apprentice’s group.

More importantly at the moment though, as additional evidence, this post rang my bell quite a bit:

I thought that was a rather bold breadcrumb, but I’m now inclined to believe that I saw support for fellow monks as evidence of knowledge from investigation.

3228

This really is getting wierd now.

Ok. first off, Idle Thoughts, thanks for taking the time to actually show your breadcrumbs as proof you are a Monk.

Cookies, sachertorte: I am definitely looking for the same from you.

Unfortunately, **sachertorte ** saying “**Zeriel ** is not scum” could also come from the point that **sachertorte ** is scum and knows that **Zeriel ** is not.

Confusing isn’t it. :confused:

Judging by numbers, the town’s actual safest option for the town is (unfairly for some) to dunk sachertorte.

  1. If MHaye has been converted, I reckon there are 6 Cultists around and a day + night kill = game over.

  2. If Mhaye is right and there has been no recuit, there are 5 cultists and we can afford the hit.

Also this line of questioning is not going to go too far unless **zuma ** pops up again.

Until that happens, I will be looking for the other cultists, instead of trying to work out which of the two sets of people are right.

One last question: WTF is a PUI???

(Post under influence :smack: Now I get it.)

3229

(Ack! I posted something this morning before going to work, but it’s not here. I will recreate)

I would like to caution the town from being duped by Idle Thoughts intriguing offer of having discovered three scum (Me, Cookies and MHaye). three scum just like that, sound too good to be true? It is.

Also Idle Thoughts’s Theory requires quite a bit of faith that certain events occurred. First, it requires that MHaye is the Apprentice and was recruited. What is the probability that scum recruited MHaye? Did they know MHaye was the Apprentice? If so, how? Were they just lucky? Perhaps.
But Idle Thoughts’s Theory also requires that I be scum, and that I must have been scum from the very beginning since scum can’t have recruited both MHaye and me. But what about Hal, The Oracle, and possible breadcrumbs? This theory requires believing that Hal did not investigate me and dropped a possible breadcrumb about someone he knew nothing about. What about the prophet? This makes a touch more sense, but look at my history. I was nearly dunked on the first day. Are my actions on Day One consistent with the actions of a prophet?
Idle Thought’s Theory requires too much to be believed. Scum had to have recruited the Apprentice and Hal had to have breadcrumbed someone he didn’t investigate, or the prophet has to be me. Too complex.

For Idle Thoughts to be scum, he just has to be scum. No twisting of events, or resolving who was recruited or figuring out Hal’s breadcrumbs, or figuring out who the prophet is. Idle Thoughts is scum caught in a counter-claim. Caught with the mistake that MHaye knew more than just “sachertorte is a believer,” but that investigations reveal power roles as well. It reasons out on its own simply and cleanly.

Also, we have zuma, who from my perspective was about to denounce MHaye as the Apprentice. How can zuma counter-claim MHaye **and **be a Monk? Idle Thoughts’s Theory is full of holes.

Stuff that I recall regarind monk interactions:

  • storyteller saying he was going to vote for either Mtgman or me, and finally voting for Mtgman (which I think surprised a few people, but not me :smiley: ).
  • my reactions to storyteller’s differing viewpoint on game analysis were very guarded and non-confrontational.
  • During Day One when I was up for dunking, Zeriel and Cookies did quite a bit of vote hopping in what appeared to me as attempts to keep me alive.
  • When Hal died and there was the hunt for breadcrumbs I tried to look like a regular believer by stating something to the effect of Hal might not have left any breadcrumbs since he wouldn’t even need to breadcrumb powerroles since powerroles can roleclaim. I used storyteller as an example. In truth, I had already seen Hal’s breadcrumb of me. I was attempting to subtly imply to scum that I was vanilla believer, to induce recruitment.
  • I recall voting for ScubaBen instead of HockeyMonkey (who I was more suspicious of at the time) because Zeriel and Cookies had already voted for HockeyMonkey.
  • I thought Zeriel pretty much outed me as a Monk when he was arguing with NAF and backed off because ‘people he trusts’ were saying NAF didn’t look so scummy anymore.
  • Kyrie already caught my being overzealous in defending Zeriel. At the time I honestly thought the Mtgman’s analysis of ArizonaTeach was so spot on that I could convince the town that Zeriel was town without being obvious. After posting I saw I was too blunt. That plus Zeriel’s statements about NAF and subsequent roleclaim had me convinced that scum knew I was a Monk.
3230

OK, I am still trying to sort out what the hell is going on, but Catina, I am not following your argument here, would you mind restating? IF there is a “safe” play, I would like to know it. The way I am looking at things we have to dunk one of 5 people toDay to get any sort of clarity, and we probably have to dunk MHaye eventually to find out if we can trust his information. (Sorry MHaye, but the chance that you were recruited is high no matter which side comes out as the real monks).

I don’t know where I am putting my vote yet, but I want to be as sure as possible that we are on the right track before we do.

Also, have we taken the avatar contingency into account? Is it time to have all of us place a vote and have (who was it who volunteered?) be the only voter? We know we are going to catch at least two scum in the next 3 Days, and the chances of one scum being the Avatar are good (especially since I can’t see there being more than 2 scum and a profit left if the game is going to be balanced, I know these are not the accepted numbers but I can’t believe that Blaster would balance the game in such a way that we could hit a lynch or lose situation with this many people still alive)

3231

2 questions:

How much time is left in the Day?

Where is Zuma?

3232

11:15pm EDT on Tuesday, according to BlaM’s sig.

Pass. I saw him online about 2½-3 hours back but then had to go out.

3233

Dusk is at 11:15 pm eastern Tuesday if I remember right. So we have a little over 36 hours.

What is the official vote cound BlaM?

3234

It is going to take me some time to dig up all of the references where evidence of monk-monk interaction might be seen.

I purposefully did not direct anyone to them because I hoped they would be more compelling if some of you found them on your own. I still feel that way, but we’re running out of time and there are certainly enough of you who appear willing to swallow the rusty hook that Idle is waving so frantically below your nose.

While I’m at it, I will also be drawing your attention to how all-over-the-place Idle has been with his posts toDay. You don’t have to wait for me though, I really encourage you to look at what he’s been saying and how he’s been saying it. As sarchertorte stated above, Idle is working it so hard because it takes a lot of work to pull off such an elaborate con with only one “public” face.

3235

I’m thinking that it’s better to lynch sachertorte. If **IT/zuma **are telling the truth, sachertorte/Cookies/MHaye are Cultists (a conversion occurred), and we may lose if we dunk a Townie. If sachertorte/Cookies/MHaye are telling the truth, the conversion likely did not happen, meaning we have a better chance if we dunk a Townie. Does this make sense?

So, unless I see some convincing evidence either way, I think it’s safer to dunk sachertorte.

–FCOD

3236

OK,

Given there were 30 players to begin with, I would have expected 5-6 Cultists.

Worse case scenario is that we have 5 cultists left. Also they may or may not have recruited.

A few possibilites spring to mind

Assume we dunk sachertorte.

  1. They have not recruited, and MHaye is truthful. We dunk one town and lose another overnight leaving 12 players, that would leave 5 cult and 7 townies with definite ID on **Idle Thoughts ** and zuma v.2

  2. They have not recruited, and **MHaye ** is lying (ie. **MHaye ** is not the real Apprentice). We dunk one scum and lose a townie overnight leaving 12 players, that would leave 4 cult and 8 townies with dunks on Cookies and MHaye.

  3. The have recruited and MHaye is lying, ie. MHaye the Apprentice has been recruited (only reason for his lying). We dunk one scum and lose one town overnight leaving 5 scum and 7 townies and with definite dunks on **Cookies ** and MHaye.

  4. They have recruited someone else (eg. Hockey Monkey for the sake of the example) and MHaye is truthful, We dunk one town and lose another overnight leaving 6 cult and 6 town. Game Over.
    If anyone can come up with some other scenarios - all details would be useful.
    I will repeat the same above with the assumption we dunk **Idle Thoughts ** in a mo.

All of this is a bit speculative until **zuma ** gets here.

In terms of the Avatar, at this point I think we have to pick someone and everyone in the town has to pile on in the hopes it it is the Avatar and will take out a Cultist instead.

Don’t forget the Cult do not know who the Avatar is and will also want to be very wary of being in a Cultist dunk party, otherwise they could be struck down as well.

zuma: You have some explaining to do, I hope the coffee helps.

3237

Same details as above but assuming we dunk Idle Thoughts.

  1. They have not recruited, and **MHaye ** is truthful. We dunk one cult and lose a town overnight leaving 12 players, that would leave 4 cult and 8 townies with definite ID on zuma v.2

  2. They have not recruited, and **MHaye ** is lying (ie. **MHaye ** is not the real Apprentice). We dunk one town and lose a town overnight leaving 12 players, that would leave 5 cult and 7 townies, but with a definite ID on Cookies, **MHaye ** and sachertorte.

  3. The have recruited and **MHaye ** is lying, ie. **MHaye ** the Apprentice has been recruited (only reason for his lying). We dunk one town and lose one town overnight leaving 6 scum and 6 townies. Game Over.

  4. They have recruited someone else (eg. **Hockey Monkey ** for the sake of the example) and **MHaye ** is truthful, We dunk one scum and lose a town overnight leaving 5 cult and 7 town, with a definite ID on zuma v.2
    Make of these examples what you will :confused:

3238

Thanks FCoD and Catina, that makes sense to me now.

Dunk Sach.

So, now what? We see who is in the lead after everyone has voted and then have a single person vote for them while everyone else unvotes?

3239

I think this is a stupid idea. Say the single person votes for scum. Then that person and one other scum place a vote at the last minute. And they’d probably do it for MHaye. Is that really what you want?

3240

Oh…right. Shit. Well then, do we just ignore the avatar possibility?