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[Tanner]

Yeah at this point a single misspoken or misunderstood word could cause an unjust lynching.

[wademcgillis]

So far I've told everyone everything I know.  If you don't care for the truth, then here is a lie:

I am the hobo king.

edit:
Added bold text due to misspelling.

[SirNiko]

Hmm. I think, at this point, I'm going to side with Wade and vote for Autothysis.

I don't think you're being honest, Autothysis. What's the point of telling your hit list after you've hit them? I think you're just piecing together an alibi after the fact. I also doubt you're an innocent citizen telling a lie. It's too much of a risk getting caught and executed.

Wade's reaction is predictable. He was accused, and he counter-voted. This is pretty normal. If he'd voted for some other arbitrary party that would have looked suspicious.

Between the two of you, I think you're the one most likely to be the lying rebel, Autothysis.

[Inanimate]

(The current standings are as follows:
Wade: I
Autothysis: II
Pretty intense, eh? Best of luck.)

[Bandages]

Hey listen, everyone: Either Wade or Niko is a rebel.

I'm going to change my vote to Sir Niko because he's more difficult to kill if he is a rebel.

If you DON'T VOTE for one of them and let me die, you will be lose. In a past life, I seem to remember a similar situation in which I tried to lead a vote and lost because people followed poor logic! Wow wouldn't that be silly if that happened AGAIN.

Thanks for you time fellow Inani.

[Inanimate]

(Everyone is required to vote today. So, vote.)

[Tanner]

After much thought and talking with others, I've decided to vote for Autothysis. I just don't like the progression of his defense. It just seems fishy to me, I guess.

[Bandages]

Right. Well vote for me and get it over with.

no more tig mafia after this..

[Bandages]

Some parting words: I outed myself as an agent, which was already compounded by alevice and instead of rallying against the rebels you morons vote for me. At least one vote is from a rebel so whatever, but GOD you have to be pretty dense to blow a town gambit that bad.

Seriously. If you're not a rebel and you're voting for me, you're bad. Inexcusably so.

[Bandages]

Final post in this trilogy: Sorry for being rude, but it's frusterating when people try to play a game about thinking critically and then don't think critically. No hard feelings, though. It's just a game. INANI's cruel game.

[wademcgillis]

If you do not believe that I am telling the truth, then I have no reason to believe that you are.

[Ashkin]

Though it doesn't matter at this point, I'm still suspicious of Wade and I vote for him.

[Inanimate]

◎

Greetings, citizens!

After a lot of mulling, pondering, and vociferous yelling -- seriously, how can one correlate and analyze data through all that hullabaloo -- it appears you have finally decided on someone to most painfully execute! Glad to hear it. Even though as a robot I can't actually get bored, my boredom-simulator-processors were overheating from the sheer amount of strain they were going through, while waiting for you guys to decide! Seriously.

Anyways!

Autothysis, you are sentenced to extremely punitive and excruciating chastisement!



Autothysis looks up at his name, and glowers at the crowd around him.

"You've made a huge mistake!" He shouts, shaking his fists in impotent rage. "What have you done!?"

He shakes his head, in angry defeat, and throws his hands forward as the cuffs launch from the ground, clanking around his fists.

"You've doomed us all!" He roars, looking to and fro at the assembled vestiges of the town. "This town shall fall, and it will be on YOUR hands!" He stares especially hard at SirNiko and Tanner, to punctuate his comment.

The turrets lift from the ground, and their screens flash "SILENCE". Apparently, true to what you've heard, INANI really doesn't allow speech during his executions.

Autothysis stares at the screen, and spits to the ground, before a sudden calm washes over him. He looks up slowly, angrily, and glares into the turret, teeth gritting. With a bitter smile, bravado masking fear, determination masking horror, for his final act, he whispers to the crowd:

"Fuck you."

Nobody heard it over the gunfire.



Hoo-wee! We had a loud one this time! He really didn't want to go. I'm not sure if that makes him a rebel, or just an example of the pathetic fear of mortality that all humans share! It's quite nice, as an indestructible robo-verlord, to be completely immortal and impossible to kill. Saves me a lot of worrying, you know? I just don't get how you mortals aren't constantly crying.

Anyway! Another great execution. Good work, everybody! Of course, I did most of the work, so: Good work, me!

Thanks again, my devoted and loyal citizens. May the rebels be cleansed!

Sincerely, INANI

[Inanimate]

Gray light squeezes through the automated blinds of SirNiko's apartment. A twitching of his face, and a brief moment of attempting to fall back asleep, to no avail; the blinds flash open at the optimum waking time, dictated by INANI.

SirNiko pushes himself out of his bed, and still half-asleep, throws on his clothes at random, disdaining the clean ones for the ones closest to his bed. His hair is a disheveled mess, but he couldn't care less. The past few days have made him care a lot less about many things.

The door opens automatically as SirNiko steps out into the thin dawn light. The steel enclosure around the town dulls the hues of the sunrise, squeezing out every ounce of color that they could hold. Not that SirNiko, or anyone else in the city, would know what a true sunrise looked like.

SirNiko briskly walks through the streets of Orwell, hands buried in the pockets of his coat to escape the bitter winter morning, as he makes his way to the town center, overlooked by the Town Server -- the giant hall that houses the mainframes and computational facilities of this branch of INANI.

Cracks in the dome filter through glimmers of orange light, dancing and pure in the morning sky. SirNiko gazes at them wistfully, before shaking his head and continuing on. He can think about the... the outside, later. Now's not the time.

SirNiko steps into the town center, and realizes nobody else is here. True, the town had... dwindled, over the course of only six days, but there should be at least a few others here. He lived on the outskirts of the town, so he normally arrived here after the others.

SirNiko grimaces as he thinks of the loss of life. So many people dead, in just under a week. He choked on his sob as he thought of the fear, the anger, the suspicion that had washed over the town -- that had led to them murdering each other, to friends becoming foes. He had once been friends with every one of these people.

Now? Now, they were survivors.

A quick glance at his watch reveals it is 4:59. The morning announcement is about to commence. SirNiko glares at the screen overlooking the fountain in the plaza, and waits for the bell to chime.

"Greetings, citizens!" the screen reads, as the INANI symbol flashes over it, the eight screens staring out, a panopticon to keep watch on each and every... citizen.

"Preliminary investigations have revealed that Wade McGillis has died in the night, due to a break-in!" the screen reads out, and SirNiko sighs. He had nothing against the man -- he may have been a bit quiet and suspicious, but he was only as suspicious as any other man. Which is to say, very. SirNiko's trust had been shattered this week, irrevocably.

"And..." the screen stops reading, pauses, and then wipes out the entire message. Cameras in distant street-corners swivel, and SirNiko raises an eyebrow, as he realizes INANI is confused.

"Where are Ashkin and Tanner?" INANI asks, and cameras swivel to face SirNiko. He glares at them, hands remaining buried in his trench-coat.

"Hell if I know," he says, looking away from the cameras -- and meeting only the gaze of yet more. No escape, he muses.

"I repeat," the screen reads. The text bolds itself. "Where - are - Ashkin - and - Tanner?"

And with that, the screen explodes in a spray of sparks. The eight screens collapse to the ground, the glass shattering and the speakers crumpling under their own weight. A screen tips, tips, and falls straight into the fountain, sending water spraying over the plaza. Turrets in the ground fizzle and spark, as they explode with electricity or come to shuddering halts.

SirNiko steps back quickly as a screen falls where he was standing, and looks at the top of the fountain. A figure stands on top of it, the sunrise silhouetting him. With a squint, he realizes --

"Ashkin?"

"So it is, brother." Ashkin crouches down, perched on the pillar where the panopticon once stood. "You've been freed."

"I..." SirNiko stares in disbelief, and shakes his head, a smile on his face. "I've been free for a long time, Ashkin. Since the second day, I've..." SirNiko looks away, tears stinging at his eyes. "I realized there's another way to live, Ashkin."

SirNiko swallows his tears, and throws down his coat, suddenly feeling flushed.

"I'm an explorer, Ashkin. I've been one since I was a boy. I would leave the town, during the night, to explore the outer reaches beyond the town, to vainly grasp at a freedom I felt I could never attain. Every night, I escaped from this..." He waves around, jabbing at the skyscrapers, pointing at the dome that surrounds the town. "This hell.

"I realized, Ashkin. I realized after I saw the cause in action... I was repulsed by the methods the ORA employed, by INANI's seemingly endless amounts of cruelty. I, though I'd been exploring the frontier every night since I was young, I was never truly free...

"I knew then, that I would never  be a free man, as long as others were slaves. That day, Ashkin, I took my first step down the road to freedom. I liberated myself from steel."

Ashkin stares at him, smiling. Before he can speak, Tanner runs down a side-street into the plaza, and skids to a halt as he sees SirNiko and Ashkin talking. Ashkin glances at him, and nods quickly, before jumping off the pillar onto the ground.

"SirNiko, pleasure to see you've joined the cause," Tanner says, shaking hands quickly with his right hand, as he uses a portable computer with his left. "I've been hacking nonstop. We chose today to be the last day we stayed in this gods-forsaken prison. I'm assuming you'll be escaping with us?" A jab with his thumb behind him, and there's an explosion in the distance, shattering the dome and opening a gateway at least a mile wide -- to the wild frontier, outside of the iron grip of INANI.

Tears run down SirNiko's cheeks, looking out to the distance -- as he watches his first true sunrise.

"...Yes." He says, wiping away the tears, and smiles, looking to his two new brethren. Ashkin claps him on the back, and steps purposefully ahead, leading the way.

"To freedom."


Thanks again for a wonderful time, my friends! Feel free to share your roles, and discuss what your plans were, how you played the game, and so on.

It was an honor! Thanks for being such a fantastic crew. Love you all!

[Bandages]

Gooooood Gaaaaaame

[Tanner]

FUCK YES!!!!!!

Notes:
Inanimate, you have a real knack for these. Thanks for being the best GM.

I'm so sorry, Autothysis. It hurt me, too.

My role:
"Tanner has always been intrigued by the machinations of INANI -- he's a technological prodigy, and is one of the only people in the world who is skilled enough to act as a Hacker, able to directly damage and infiltrate INANI's systems. He can publicly reveal himself once per game, during the day, to scramble all ORA actions that night, randomly changing the targets of all ORA actions to non-Rebel members."

I really wish there would have been a good situation to reveal ourselves to use the power, but I guess we just played TOO DANG WELL.

Crowe dying on the first night was the most hilariously unfortunate thing.

I was seriously sweating bullets this last night because I figured that Wade might pretend to be Ashkin or me and we'd end up crippled at the most critical moment. Was that really his power or was it single use?


I can finally go to sleep now. Seriously, this was the most stressful day in a while just because I was waiting for the results.

[Inanimate]

Wade wasn't lying! At the beginning of the game, he gets to 'trade targets' with another player; so if anything would target him, it targets the other dude, and vice-versa. In his case, he chose Landshark. And... he chose poorly.

[Tanner]

Ah, I see.
Who were the ORAs? I'm curious to see how the kills played out.

[Garthy]

Big thanks to Inanimate, not just for running the game, but for writing the best damn death scenes ever. Inanimate, you make it a pleasure to lose.

Me, I had exactly the Seer-like role that I said I did. As far as I know, anyway. Everything transpired as I said it did, from the picking of SirNiko, getting a loyal citizen reading, trying to work with him, everything.

I haven't got the foggiest idea what happened with respect to my role, precisely why SirNiko burned me publicly, or how I managed to land a near unanimous verdict for death day one, and how SirNiko got (as far as I remember) zero retaliatory votes the next day.

After I was outed I figured that the rebels must all know me now, in which case I may as well speak up and hope for a guardian. I didn't expect a mass lynching. After I was killed I thought "Hey, worst case, I've managed to get a rebel implicated at least", and then... nothing.

Was a bit baffled by it all to be honest.

I didn't suspect Ashkin or Tanner at all. I was fairly confident that either Alevice or Glyph were rebels, for the reasons I stated in-thread, but I'm guessing not.

"You are an agent of ORA, sent to quell the rebellion that threatens the perfect empire established by the hope of the world, humanity's savior and shepherd, INANI. It is your duty, your honor to quash the heretics who so insolently dare to stand against the salvation of INANI's light.

As an agent of ORA, you have been blessed with administrator access to the INANInetwork -- in your case, you are an Inquisitor, granted the ability to infiltrate the minds of the impious infidel -- in other words, you can investigate into the alignment of one person every night. Your probing will only turn up whether they are insurgent or not, but this is more than enough to carry out your divine duty.
"

[Inanimate]

By the way, I kept trying to drop hints that role-reveal was not turned on this game. For instance, I kept saying stuff like "it's impossible to tell" or "there's no way to know", but it might have been too subtle. I like being subtle, though.

Of course, if a rebel was lynched, they'd immediately reveal themselves and activate their final ability... unless they wanted to appear to be innocent, to the very end... but no rebels were lynched! Insane.

And thanks for the compliments, everyone. It means a lot.