Mafia VIII - information and summary thread

[GeneralHankerchief]

This thread is for quick reference to the kill/lynch scenes in Mafia VIII. It is to be used only be GeneralHankerchief (me).

Initial players: (38)
Ichigo
Privateerkev
RoadKill
TinCow
Elite Ferret
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
LittleGrizzly
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Craterus
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Tratorix
peverpink
Sarathos
Andres
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
TevashSzat
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
Omanes Alexandropolites
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. It was another beautiful day in the tranquil Kingdom of Peace and Love. With the sun just starting to rise, nature was displayed in all of its majesty, with little to disturb the golden rays from inching upon the soft dew of the grass, the multicolored birds from arising and beginning their daily symphony, the-

BLAM!

Startled, the birds flew away, one of them depositing their droppings on the Chief of Police's car.

A morning jogger by the name of Tratorix was down on the ground in an alleyway as part of a shortcut he had taken on the way home. He had tripped to a loose shoelace. Upon tying his shoe, he got up and promptly sat down in surprise at what he had seen.

A man, dressed in a trenchcoat and gray fedora, was looking down at Tratorix and pleasantly smiling.

"Delightful morning, isn't it," he asked. Tratorix, still in shock, especially at the man's impeccable dress at this hour, did not respond. The well-dressed man went on. "Of course, those birds are a bit annoying... Anyway, it's a shame it'll be your last." The single shot went off, unnaturally loudly, setting the birds off. Tratorix crumpled, never to jog again.

Three hours later, Omanes Alexandropolites woke up and looked around groggily, searching for his clock. It felt late. Finally finding the clock and confirming the time, he realized that it was late. The birds were supposed to wake him up.

"I wonder where they went," he wondered out loud. Bah, never mind. It was time to get on with his (abbreviated) morning routine.

"Skip breakfast or shower?" he asked. He considered both possibilities. Omanes was of the firm belief that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and did his best to sit down and see the day in right every day. Of course, showering was important as well. A person with good hygiene was a person with good health, after all.

Eventually he decided to skip breakfast, opting instead for the shower. After all, he would suffer by going hungry, but if he didn't take a shower then everybody else would suffer by having to smell his reek. After getting into his bathrobe, Omanes opened the curtain to his shower.

"You chose wrong," said a man, fully-dressed, pumping a shotgun and evidently waiting for him. A second later Omanes was gone.

"Looks like the bathroom's gonna need to be cleaned again," the man remarked as he left without looking back.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut had all of the townspeople gathered in the Frontroom Square to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "at approximately 6:08 this morning Tratorix was brutally murdered by a single shot to the head. As a result of this crime the birds in the area, startled, all flew away, ONE OF THEM SOILING MY CAR. Were it not for the gunshot, it still would have been clean! This is unacceptable. I want you all to find who fired that shot and lynch him!"

"Uh," someone in the audience said, what about finding who killed Tratorix? I think Omanes is dead, too, should we do anything about that?"

"Yes... of, uh, course..." Beirut stammered, clearly forgetting about the two murders when compared with the magnitude of his car being used for target practice. "Right, well, it's probably the work of the mafia, and as everybody knows, cops can't do anything about the mafia, so it's up to you guys to find the perps who killed Tratorix, murdered Omanes, and made my car dirty, and lynch them. This will be done democratically, so get to it!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (38)
Ichigo
Privateerkev
RoadKill
TinCow
Elite Ferret
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
LittleGrizzly
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Craterus
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
peverpink
Sarathos
Andres
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
TevashSzat
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandropolites

[GeneralHankerchief]

Chief of Police Beirut looked out over the town square from the newly-constructed execution platform and swelled with pride. His charges, the villagers of the Frontroom, were doing their civic duty and voting! Granted, it was to horribly execute the person that had killed two of their own, but nonetheless they were voting. Beirut was so proud of them.

He walked down, off the platform, and towards the townspeople, hoping to catch snippets of their deliberations and glean valuable information towards every individual's psyche.

"Vote for me, it means I'm innocent!"

"I'm voting for him because it's tradition!"

Tradition? Beirut thought. That was weird... surely, none of them had ever done this before...

Well, at least they were voting, he supposed.

Eventually, all the discussion wore down, votes were cast, and Beirut, back atop the execution platform, called for order.

"Gentlemen," he began, "It is time to enforce your decision. Privateerkev, as per your... er... wishes, you will hereby and immediately be executed."

Privateerkev eagerly bounded up the platform, clapping his hands again and again and overall, looking like a small, hyperactive child who had a $100 gift certificate to the candy store. "Oh, goody!" he shouted over the crowd, "I can't wait to start! How'm I going to get executed? Hanging? Electric chair? Sharks with frickin' lasers?"

"Nope," Beirut replied incredulously. "To send a message to the mafia, your tongue will be removed and you will be buried alive with approximately 27 rather large tarantulas to keep you company." He pulled a rope and next to the execution platform, a sand pit and a large wooden crate with the words "DO NOT OPEN" stamped on it were revealed.

The color quickly drained out of PK's face and the world record for "fastest, most drastic facial expression change" was shattered.

"If you'll hold still, please," Beirut said, brandishing a large, rusty knife. "Open wide!"

Privateerkev started screaming at the top of his lungs and didn't stop until there was no more air to enter his lungs, some thirty horrible minutes later. Every single townsperson could hear him even through the large amount of sand placed over his and the tarantulas' bodies.

"Just a reminder, if you're a mafioso, the same fate or worse awaits you, Beirut said cheerily. If you'd like to confess now, then I can arrange a quick, humane execution instead."

Silence.

"No? Well then, go home everybody and hope you did your jobs."

Day 1 tally:
Privateerkev: 11 (Privateerkev, RoadKill, TinCow, Sasaki Kojiro, peverpink, Sarathos, KukriKhan, TevashSzat, Fenring, Seamus Fermanagh, Kagemusha) :skull:
Sasaki Kojiro: 7 (Ichigo, Elite Ferret, LittleGrizzly, |Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88, Crazed Rabbit, Rythmic, discovery1)
Elite Ferret: 2 (makaikhaan, Caius)
LittleGrizzly: 2 (shlin28, FactionHeir)
FactionHeir: 1 (woad&fangs)
TevashSzat: 1 (Sigurd Fafnesbane)
Andres: 1 (Craterus)
Quintus.J.Cicero: 1 (Gaius Scribonius Curio)
makaikhaan: 1 (Andres)
shlin28: 1 (Beefy187)
Kagemusha: 1 (Tiberius of the Drake)
Sarathos: 1 (CountArach)
woad&fangs: 1 (Kommodus)

Didn't vote: 5 (Mithrandir, Lord Winter, Quintus.J.Cicero, georgeman51, Joe Monks)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (35)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
Elite Ferret
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
LittleGrizzly
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Craterus
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
peverpink
Sarathos
Andres
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
TevashSzat
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites

Executed:
Privateerkev

Congratulations, you've just survived your first day phase! I'd also like to say thank you for voting, because having only 5 "no votes" in the first round is really impressive. :yes: PMs please.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. The birds had returned since the unexpected disturbance of their morning routine yesterday, although they were not singing, as if wary that there would be a similiar breaking of the silence today. The fact that the Chief of Police had spent the previous night looking out the window overlooking his car, clutching his hunting rifle, probably didn't help things either.

The mood of the birds of the Frontroom was a microcosm for the mood of the village as a whole: Normal, but cautious. Yes, they had lynched one of their own the previous night. Yes, Beirut had done so with the most inhumane procedure any of them had ever heard of, especially in the Kingdom of Peace and Love. Yes, the townspeople were confident in their choice.

But... there was still the possibility that they were wrong.

It didn't bother Andres enough to keep him from his own morning jogging routine, however. After all, what was a potential mafia attack with the consequences reaching the possibility of the total extinction of his peaceful little town when compared with the maintenance of his fitness regimen?

To be fair, it helped that he jogged on the other side of town from Tratorix's usual route. Andres went the scenic way, spending quite a bit of time in the Frontroom Park, far away from the alleyway which, by this point, had been sealed off.

He jogged past the lake, with its many ducks and trace amounts of osmium, around the Frontroom cliffs with its extremely pointy rocks at the bottom, back to the lake where, sitting on a bench that looked like it hadn't been there before, was a man, impeccably dressed, wearing a fedora and trenchcoat and waving at Andres.

Andre, out of breath, stopped automatically to wave back and chat with the man. "Excellent morning for running, I do say," he said aimiably.

"They all are," Andres said.

"Indeed," said the man. "Allow me to recommend a beautiful route up in the hills, if you're up for a change of scenery."

"The hills, eh?" Andres panted. "Maybe it is time to adjust my route. I'll have to try that sometime."

"I'm afraid you won't be able to," the man said, whipping out his revolver and blasting Andres, all with an apologetic smile on his face. Andres's lifeless corpse rolled into the lake, the ducks having already made room for him by flying away upon the sound of the mafioso's gunshot.

Craterus, deep in the Frontroom marshes, watched the ducks fly away with his high-powered binoculrs. They were headed right for him, probably to make themselves comfortable in their second habitat now that the lake in the park (and the many breadcrumbs to go with it) had been disturbed.

He took his own hunting rifle and prepared to make a kill... but decided against it. If he shot one of them now then the others might pass by him entirely, headed for perhaps another habitat. No, better to let them rest, lull them in a false sense of security... and then pick them off with the help of his trusty decoy.

So he watched as the ducks landed in the marshes and spread out... and lied in wait.

Time passed...

Thirty minutes...

...an hour...

Finally, he was ready. The decoy had been set afloat and one particular mallard was now interested in it, swimming over to it to further examine it. Craterus had his gun ready, the duck in his sights, his finger on the trigger...

BBBB-BRBBTA-BRBBTA-BRAWWWWWWW!!!

Startled at this new sounds, all the ducks flew away. Craterus, totally concentrated on getting the duck by the decoy, was taken totally by surprise and missed any chance he had at nabbing any of the ducks. Cursing silently, he waited as the sound drew closer.

The sound in question was a motorboat, strangely being piloted by a fully-dressed man, heading right for him.

"You idiot!" Craterus shouted when the man in the motorboat was close enough. "You made me miss my ducks! I had been lying in wait for over an hour!"

"And lie you shall do some more," the man said, pumping his shotgun and sending Craterus into the quickly-dirtying water.

"At least there was one kill in the marshes today," the man said as he piloted his boat back to civilization.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut had gathered the remaining villagers into the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "today there has been two more kills, both concerning the ducks of the Frontroom. The poor creatures got so startled at listening to two separate gunshots that one of them FLEW RIGHT INTO MY BAY WINDOW!!! Do you realize how much those things cost?! That was imported glass, too..."

"Who was murdered?" somebody asked.

"Andres and Craterus," Beirut said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Thus, we will have to begin the lynching process again. I have a couple of notes, though. First of all, due to all the property damage caused by these murders - namely, my property being damaged - a $2000 fine will be imposed in addition to execution. Second of all, I received a note from the OBI (the .Org Bureau of Investigation, that is) saying that killing somebody via a rusty knife, live burial, and tarantulas is inhumane and thus, illegal. So scaring the mafia is out."

"Wait a minute, the OBI tells us ways we can't kill people but won't help us out with this mafia problem?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Beirut said. "Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (33)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
Elite Ferret
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
LittleGrizzly
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
peverpink
Sarathos
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
TevashSzat
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus

Executed:
Privateerkev

[GeneralHankerchief]

The goofiness and mingling that had categorized the previous day's execution had died a swift death after the morning's murders. Everybody realized that, hey, four people had died, not counting the lynch, and the mafia weren't going away. With that in mind, everyone buckled down and got to work - those who bothered working, that is.

Everyone except Elite Ferret.

Apparently not having got the message, this obviously coldhearted, callous, unfeeling individual quickly earned the ire of everyone around him by cracking (bad) jokes, voting for weird reasons, and generally ot taking the process seriously.

"You think this is something funny?!" one of the townspeople screamed at him. "You think that it's okay to laugh at four of us dying horrible deaths?"

The sand pit on the execution platform stirred for a second, as if making a comment on the number of people dead that was stated. Nobody noticed, however.

Instead, the town's bloodlust had been activated at the perceived attack on their values. In an instant, all of them seemed to change into farmers' clothing and brought out torches and pitchforks, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Kill the jokester! Kill the jokester!"

EF paled.

"Now, wait a second guys - hold on! I'll help you out! Really, I will! See, look - where'd you get that gun from? Didn't two of us die from shotgun wounds? Think about him, guys! Uh... guys? Guys?!"

It was too late, however. The villagers of the Kingdom of Peace and Love were in full mob mode and directing their wrath towards Elite Ferret, who scrambled up the execution platform and cowered behind Chief of Police Beirut.

"Beirut, please! You gotta help me out! This crowd... this... this is madness!"

Suddenly Beirut ripped his shirt off and grew a full beard.

"Madness...?" the Chief of Police said. "THIS... IS... SPARTA!!!"

Raising his right leg, he kicked Elite Ferret with the bottom of his foot, who fell into the torches and pitchforks of the angry crowd. They swarmed around him, shouting and cursing so loudly that even EF's screams could not be heard. When they finally calmed down, ten minutes later, Elite Ferret was simply gone. There were a few bloodstains on the ground as well as ash, but that was it.

"Wow," said Beirut, back to his normal self. "Impressive. I also want to thank you guys for helping me out there. You ee, thanks to the OBI's meddling, I didn't even have an execution planned. Anyway, go back to your homes and hope we made the right decision."

Day 2 tally:

Elite Ferret: 5 (TinCow, makaikhaan, LittleGrizzly, Beefy187, Seamus Fermanagh) :skull:
FactionHeir: 2 (woad&fangs, Gaius Scribonius Curio)
LittleGrizzly: 2 (shlin28, TevashSzat)
Sasaki Kojiro: 1 (Ichigo)
Ichigo: 1 (Elite Ferret)
Beefy187: 1 (peverpink)
shlin28: 1 (Sarathos)
Mithrandir: 1 (KukriKhan)
Kagemusha: 1 (Crazed Rabbit)
Seamus Fermanagh: 1 (Kagemusha)
makaikhaan: 1 (FactionHeir)

Abstained: 2 (Rythmic, Joe Monks)
Didn't vote: everybody else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (32)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
LittleGrizzly
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
peverpink
Sarathos
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
TevashSzat
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret

Not happy about all the no-votes.

PMs please.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. A good old-fashioned angry mob session was as effective as a hard night of drinking when it came to tiredness the next day, and as a result, most people were sleeping in. Out of those that weren't, none of them went jogging, not after two of the murdered were joggers.

However, there were other reasons to be out. There were some rituals that required strict adherence to tradition, after all. One of them happened to be smoking. LittleGrizzly was one of those people who truly only smoked for pleasure, not because he was addicted to the nicotine. He didn't waste his time with those filthy cigarettes, which he considered the height of uncouthness. No, he instead enjoyed one of life's greatest pleasures: Cubans.

Grizz hadn't replenished his supply in a while, and it would be impossible to do so now that the mafia were on the attack. He was down to one box, so he figured that he might as well enjoy them. So, on another beautiful morning in the Frontroom, he took his remaining box, drove downtown, and made his way to one of the roofs to enjoy his cigar n the morning air.

He was halfway through, puffing away, when another figure emerged from the stairs. The man was impeccably dressed, wearing a trenchcoat and a gray fedora. One of his hands were concealed inside the trenchcoat, immediately alerting Grizz that something was wrong. He quickly began eyeing nearby buildings, calculating which one posed the least risk of injury should he have to make a jump for it.

Then the man spoke. "What a wonderful day this is," he said in a cheery voice. Its overall tone completely disarmed Grizz, who wasn't expecting it. "Ah, yes," the man said, noticing Grizz's Cuban. "A Cuban on a roof, on a beautiful day. It's times like these where it's a pleasure to be alive."

"Why, yes it is," said Grizzly, ready to make conversation and now completely unsuspecting. Then the man's hand whipped out of his trenchcoat, tightly gripping a revolver. "Too bad this will be the last day you are." He pulled the trigger and LittleGrizzly went down.

The man walked over to Grizz's corpse, picking up the box of slightly bloodstained Cubans. "Well, I might as well put these to good use," he said, depositing the box inside his trenchcoat and walking away.

Unbeknownst to the mafioso, his shot had once again scared off all of the birds in the area. This was the signal that TevashSzat had been waiting for. For the past two days, he had listened to the Chief of Police rant about how, because of the shots fired, the birds of the Frontroom had been disturbed, usually ending in property damage. Tevash figured that if he could pinpoint the spot where the birds were all flying away from, he would have a good chance of catching a bad guy.

"Downtown," he muttered, pocketing his bioculars and getting into his old blue car. From what he gathered, it had to be there, consdering that the birds were flying in all directions away from that area and that he had heard the shot from his house, meaning that it was probably fired on a roof where there wasn't much to block the sound from going far.

Tevash drove further and further downtown, checking for signs, looking for people... he saw someone, upon his approach, duck into a building - maybe that was the guy! Tevash sharply braked, turning his car around as he did so, preparing to make another pass-

Out of nowhere, a black Mercedes, screeching along, threatened to ram Tevash's car right into the building. Tevash swerved out of the way, just in time, and floored it. Finding the mafioso was important, but so was surviving!

He made a sharp right onto the next street, almost slamming into a fruit stand because he went a little too wide. After jamming on the gas once again, he checked his rearview mirror. The black Mercedes was right behind him, showing no signs of having almost flubbed the turn.

"I have to get out of this area," Tevash said to himself. No matter how many sharp turns he would make, the black Mercedes would always have better handling than his old blue car. The best chance was to simply stay on a road for as long as he could... and hope that the mafioso would run out of gas, or hit a tree, or something.

He stayed on a straightaway, swerving from time to time as the buildings grew farther apart and the trees grew closer together. The mafioso was keeping pace, he noticed to his chagrin. There really wasn't much he could do, he realized. The odds needed to be evened up.

He reached around his car, rolling down his window and searched for anything he might be able to throw at his pursuer. Spare change (no effect), an umbrella (missed), a large map - hit! The toss had worked perfectly, with the map unfolding itself and attaching itself to the mafioso's windshield, totally blocking his field of view.

Unfazed, the mafioso calmly held the wheel, going straight, and took out his shotgun, blowing the windshield away. His vision was restored, but now, Tevash noticed, there was nothing between him and the open air. Grinning, he took the binoculars out of his pocket and, taking his eyes off the road, aimed right for his pursuer's face.

The binoculars and the mafioso connected, with the Mercedes going upwards of 100 mph in one direction and the binoculars going a significant speed in the opposite direction, all resulting in a broken nose for the man in the Mercedes. Cursing, he swerved as he wiped the blood off, narrowly avoiding a tree. He was well behind Tevash's car now.

Back in the front, Tevash saw the mafioso take his eyes off the road once again. It was clear, even from a distance, that the mafioso was rifling through his Mercedes, looking for something. Then he saw it, headed his way, a perfect throw made.

The grenade made contact with the old blue car just as Tevash threw himself out of the driver's seat, rolling on the road, scraping himself in numerous places as his body went from 100 mph to zero. A second later, his car ignited, making him feel a little bit better about his injuries.

VROOM-CRUNCH! The pain increased exponentially as several tons of rubber and metal rolled over his body. Tevash could feel his bones breaking inside him, could hear the screech of the Mercedes ahead as it stopped...

...and then, the pain again, as the mafioso, slowly, painstakingly, ran over TevashSzat again, this time in reverse. He got out of the car, still bleeding from the nose, and gripped his shotgun. Without a word, he pointed it at his barely-conscious victim and shot.

"Didd't adyone eber tell you dat the victibs are suppode to go quiedly?" he said through his nose. He blasted Tevash once more for good measure, and then stomped him in the nose, breaking it. An eye for an eye, perhaps, even though there was no need.

He got back in his Mercedes and still drove away, cursing about the broken windshield all the blood he was getting in its fancy interior.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut had gathered the remaining villagers in the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began. "We have two more deaths today. LittleGrizzly has died smoking and TevashSzat has died in an epic car chase where we believe grenades, shotguns, and road maps were used."

"Wow!" someone exclaimed. "What was he doing before that?"

"Birdwatching," Beirut said. "By the way, speaking of the road map, I found this scribbled on the back of the road map. It might be helpful."

He passed copies of the message around to everybody, which read:

"Trouvez les lettres perdus pour aider le village"

"I have no idea what that means, but good luck."

"Wait a minute," somebody said, "Aren't you French-Canadian?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Beirut said. "Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (30)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
peverpink
Sarathos
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day 3 of the attack on the Frontroom. Six were gone, four courtesy of the mafia, two by the town's own hand. Shortly that number would rise to three, for sunset and thus the counting of the votes drew near.

The unlucky third lynchee appeared more and more likely to be peverpink, who had committed the critical error of goofing around too much. Apparently, even the barbaric execution of Elite Ferret during the previous day had failed to convince him to wise up and get serious about things. pever was about to pay the ultimate price.

"Kill the jokester! Kill the jokester!"

It was all too familiar. The town had yet to take out their mob clothing, torches, and pitchforks, but the reason that they were going after pever was exactly the same. pever, realizing far too late that he had taken things too far, tried to backpedal and plead with the town to spare him.

"Okay, I admit it! I lied! So what if I wasn't the Detective, I'm still a townie! I'm still with you guys!"

The town wasn't buying it. pever picked up the villagers' bloodlust, exhibiting a sixth sense akin to when certain animals detect fear. Remembering what had happened to EF the night before, he realized his chances of survival remaining among the townspeople weren't good. He scrambled up the execution platform, cowering behind Chief of Police Beirut, once again paralleling the lynching of yesterday.

"All right, look. I know I'm going to be lynched, so-"

"That's right," Beirut interrupted, "You are. I was about to read the tally."

"Everyone knows it's me. Can we just get on with it? I'd prefer a quick death."

"Hold on there, young'un," Beirut said. "Procedure must be honored." He cleared his throat, speaking to the rest of the angry town.

"Gentlemen," he began, "You have chosen to execute Peverpink for crimes of the Frontroom today..."

"peverpink with a lowercase 'p'", the condemned muttered under his breath."

"...now then," Beirut said, finishing up, "He is to die!"

The crowd cheered wildly. An outside observer witnessing this scene might have noted that the villagers of the Frontroom were perhaps too into it, chanting and screaming and calling for engeance. Now, finally, the mob clothes and torches and pitchforks came out, completing the déjà vu.

"peverpink," Beirut boomed. "You are hereby sentenced to death by immolation. If you are religious, now would be a good time to pray."

Looking around, pever noticed the crowd gripping their torches tighter, as if preparing to throw them. "Now, waitaminute," he said, "You're gonna waste your brand new execution platform on me? And what about you? You're here too!"

Beirut chuckled. "Unfortunately for you, only the top of the platform is flammable. And as for me, well... the Chief of Police always has a way out." Pressing a button, a propellor popped out of the top of Beirut's police hat. A second later, he was puttering above the crowd and out of sight, leaving pever to the mercy, or lack thereof, of the crowd.

The immolation was bright enough to illuminate Beirut's way home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (29)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
woad&fangs
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Crazed Rabbit
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink

PMs please.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. Nature itself, perhaps disturbed by all of the attacks on the village in the past days, seemed to be unsettled. The birds-

Oh, screw the birds.

Crazed Rabbit was hiding out on a small farm on the outskirts of town. He had picked it specifically because of its size, obscurity, and distance away from downtown, where the previous day's villains had shown themselves. Rabbit knew he would be isolated, but didn't care that much. The Chief of Police always found a way to summon everybody, no matter where they were hidden.

He was currently located not in the farmhouse, but in the empty barn nearby. With daylight poking through the cracks, Rabbit decided to explore the vast space and search for hiding places. Aside from a couple of stables, there really weren't many features at all aside from the usual hay littering the floor.

"Peasant Phill wuz here" was scratched into one of the many slats of wood.

The total silence of the place was both overwhelming and comforting. For better or for worse, Rabbit knew that he was completely alone. Yes, there was no mafioso, but there was also no help, no rescue. He was on his own.

Several hours passed by, with the barn heating up by the minute. It would be a scorcher today, and Rabbit, used to blasting the air conditioning in his comfortable house, just couldn't fight through it. At a bit before noon, he opened the barn door and stepped out into the air.

Immediately, a man nearby, holding a hoe, turned. Despite his location, the farm tool was the one thing that looked out of place, for the man was dressed in a trenchcoat and fedora and smoking what looked to be a Cuban cigar. Rabbit couldn't understand how this man could stomach the heat.

The well-dressed man waved at Rabbit, gently setting the hoe aside and making his way towards the other person.

"Morning!" he said cheerily. "It's certainly a hot one, but it's still a beautiful day!"

Rabbit was not convinced, the sense of dread passing over him. "What are you doing here?"

The man looked taken aback. "What do you mean what am I doing here?" he said. "This is my farm! I could ask the same thing about you!"

"This farm was abandoned. Nice try, mafioso."

Smoked out, the mafioso fumbled around for a second. Only a second. "Uh, um..." he said, bending down. In a flash, his revolver was out and firing; Crazed Rabbit went down screaming. Both of his kneecaps had been hit. He was effectively paralyzed.

Rabbit was prepared to take the finishing blow. Instead, he creaned his neck around and watched as the mafioso walked into the barn, whistling a merry tune. Opening a secret compartment, the mafioso rummaged around until he found what he wanted and walked out, still humming the same tune.

As the mafioso approached closer and closer, Rabbit could read what he was carrying; it was a container of some sort with the letters "PETROL" stamped on it.

Being unable to get away, Crazed Rabbit could only watch and feel the wetness as the mafioso emptied the contents on the container onto him. Once it was done to suffiency, the mafioso stepped back (way back) and flicked the still-lit cigar onto his victim.

It was over extremely quick.

woad&fangs had a similar approach to surviving any contact with persons of questionable affiliation, although it was a variation on the theme. Instead of opting for solitude, W&F had instead chosen security, fortifying his own house to the point where it resembled an army checkpoint more than a domestic dwelling.

Like any smart citizen, he had his plan mapped out. Around the full perimeter of his property (and extending a bit off it, in case anybody wanted to try a drive-by grenading) was a series of invisible lasers. If the connection was tripped, an alarm would go off in woad's house, alerting him first that the connection had indeed been tripped and then what sector it had been tripped in. Depending on this second piece of information, woad would make a quick exit off his property in the direction away from the alarm tripper, while his defense system activated, pinning down would-be attackers with machine gun fire from multiple directions.

"In case of mafioso, always have an escape plan," woad muttered to himself, paraphrasing the popular maxim regarding fire safety. "God, what a mess this town is. If we had a better police force then we wouldn't need to worry about-"

WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP

The alarm sounded, cutting off woad's soliloquy. He checked the details: The alarm had been tripped in the front of the house, which also happened to be the most heavily-fortified. Peeking at his front windows to make sure there wasn't a false alarm, he saw a dark figure carrying what was definitely a weapon.

Time to get out. W&F would go the back way, an added bonus to having the attacker approach from the front, because immediately behind his house there were woods. It was perfect cover to have him disappear for a while whilst the mafioso would have to answer the deadly crossfire from the five machine guns tasked to defend that particular side of his house.

He burst out the door and sprinted through the woods, tripping his own alarm (but the guns wouldn't fire; he had programmed that in)... and stopping dead as a figure holding a shotgun, right outside the laser line, was waiting for him.

"How... what... how?" woad stammered in disbelief.

"Depardmed store dubby", the man said nasally. It appeared that his nose had recently been broken. Without any more words, he pointed the shotgun at his shocked victim and pulled the trigger.

"What a waste of weapodry," the man said to himself and walked away.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut had the remaining villagers gathered in the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "We all know why we're here, so let's get this over with. Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (27)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Mithrandir
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Fenring
Lord Winter
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
georgeman51
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink

[GeneralHankerchief]

We have a tie vote between FactionHeir and TinCow. Here's how things are going to go down:

All votes are wiped. The voting round will start again.
All votes must be for either FH or TinCow (or abstain of course).

You have 24 hours, at which time the person with the most votes will be lynched. WoGs will happen at the end of the tiebreaker round.

Day 4 tally:
FactionHeir: 3 (TinCow, makaikhaan, Gaius Scribonius Curio)
TinCow: 3 (Sasaki Kojiro, Beefy187, FactionHeir)
makaikhaan: 1 (Ichigo)*
Kommodus: 1 (Sigurd Fafnesbane)
Sasaki Kojiro: 1 (KukriKhan)
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88: 1 (Kommodus)
KukriKhan: 1 (Rythmic)
Sarathos: 1 (Seamus Fermanagh)
Caius: 1 (Sarathos)*

*Sarathos's vote for khaan is void because he forgot to unvote Caius.

Abstained: 4 (shlin28, CountArach, Kagemusha, Joe Monks)
Didn't vote: Everyone else.

[GeneralHankerchief]

It had been a long evening. Chief of Police Beirut, desperate to get home in time to watch his favorite television program (Parking Wars), was mortified to learn that there had been a tie vote and that voting was to thus be extended. Several times he had been fingering his pistol, itching to take it out and blast both "finalists" just to end this thing.

"After all, they're probably both guilty," he mused. "I'm doing the town a favor." But of course, he didn't shoot, as if restrained by some unspoken force, some overser of the town.

Eventually, things finally sorted themselves out (after Parking Wars had finished, of course), and TinCow, lawyer extraordinare, was determined guilty of killing several citizens of the Kingdom of Peace and Love.

"TinCow," Beirut said, "You are hereby found guilty of murder, which, by the state of New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, falls into the category of 2C:11-2: Criminal homicide." TinCow suddenly started sweating bullets as Beirut pulled out a stack of papers and began reading.

"Criminal homicide, defined as when a person is guilty if he purposely, knowingly, recklessly or, under the circumstances set forth in 2C:11-5, which I will address at a later time, causes the death of another human being. Criminal homicide is divided into subcategories of murder, manslaughter, or death by auto, the charge of murder having already been specified in your case in the first paragraph of my monologue."

The crowd already started filing away. They wanted blood, not somebody droning on and on about somebody's crime! This was highly unlike Beirut.

"Section 2C:11-2.1," Beirut said, "Murder. Now, according to the aforementioned New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, which doesn't even really apply here but it's the first code I could get my hand on, criminal homicide constitutes murder when:

(1) The actor, in this case being you, purposely causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death; or

(2) The actor, again, being you, knowingly causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death; or

(3) It is committed when the actor, still you, acting either alone or with one or more other persons, is engaged in the commission of, or an attempt to commit, or flight after committing or attempting to commit robbery, sexual assault (doesn't really apply to you, or at least I hope it doesn't), arson, burglary, kidnapping, carjacking, criminal escape or terrorism perusant to section 2 of P.L.2002, clause 26 (C.2C:38-2), and in the course of such crime or of immediate flight therefrom, any person causes the death of a person other than one of the participants; except that in any prosecution of this subsection, in which the defendant was not the only participant in the underlying crime, it is an affirmative defense that the defendant... I'm just going to skip over this part because it doesn't really apply since this isn't a proper court per se, so we'll just move onto...

(4) ...any person convicted under subsection a.(1) or (2) who committed the homicidal act by his own conduct; or who as an accomplice procured the commission of the offense by payment or promise of paymentof anything of pecuniary value, pecuniary defined by dictionary.com as an adjective; 'of or pertaining to money'; or who, as a leader of a narcotics trafficking network as defined in N.J. Section 2, Clause 35-3, and in furtherance of a conspiracy enumarated in N.J. Section 2, Clause 35-3, commanded or by threat or promise solicited the commission of the offense, or, if the murder occured during the comission of the crime of terrorism, any person who committed the crime of terrorism, shall be sentenced by the court to life imprionment without eligibility for parole (for our purpose, we'll change this section to read 'immediate execution'), which sentence shall be served in a maximum security prison (again, this will be changed), if a jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that any of the following aggravating factors exist:

(a) The defendant has been convicted, at any time, of another murder. This is you, since you've killed multiple people. For purposes of this section, a conviction shall be deemed final when sentence is imposed and may be used as an aggravating factor regardless of whether it is on appeal;

(b) In the commission of the murder, the defendant purposely or knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim;

(c) The murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated assault to the victim (I think the one where you ran over TevashSzat twice before shooting him twice at point-blank range with a shotgun qualifies here);

(d) The defendant committed the murder as consideration for the receipt, or in expectation of the receipt of anything of pecuniary, again defined by dictionary.com as an adjective; 'of or pertaining to money'; value;

(e) The defendant procured-"

"TOO... MUCH... LAW!!!"

"Er, procured... the commission..."

But Beirut's continued droning had become inaudible over TinCow's screaming. Having studied and practiced law all of his adult life, he had finally snapped, declaring "enough" when having a point-black definition of his alleged crime directed at him. Shaking and sweating all over, his hands had moved up to his head, where, after seemingly little effort, TinCow ripped his own ears out in order to make it stop. His head quickly turning into a multiple-spouted red fountain, he reached over to Beirut, wrenched the gun out of his holster, and blasted it at the general direction of himself, not really bothering to aim it. He pulled the trigger again and again, just trying to make contact with something that would end the pain, and finally fell over, dead, after many shots fired.

Beirut quickly got over his shock and addressed the crowd.

"Well," he said, trying to find the right words, "Let this be a lesson to how powerfully boring law can be. Best if you don't get into it at... oh, my Lord..."

Beirut had then noticed what had happened to TinCow's errant shots. They had miraculously connected with four people's heads, and Mithrandir, Fenring, Lord Winter, and georgeman51 were all on the ground, dead, along with |Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88, who had inexplicably committed seppuku."

"Uh... I hope to God that one of them was mafia," Beirut said. But in his mind, he was thinking that he was going to have to clean this mess up, and he wouldn't even get home in time to view the late-night episode of Parking Wars.

Day 4a tally:

TinCow: 8 (FactionHeir, Sigurd Fafnesbane, CountArach, discovery1, Sasaki Kojiro, shlin28, Kommodus, Joe Monks) :skull:
FactionHeir: 5 (Gaius Scribonius Curio, Sarathos, makaikhaan, Quintus.J.Cicero, TinCow)

Abstained: 1 (KukriKhan)
Sasaki Kojiro: 1 (Seamus Fermanagh) (invalid) (now on double-secret probation)
Didn't vote: Everyone else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (21)
Ichigo
RoadKill
TinCow
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
CountArach
Kommodus
Rythmic
Seamus Fermanagh
Quintus.J.Cicero
Kagemusha
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow

PMs please.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. A chill wind breezed its way through town, perhaps a sign of the times, or more likely, that writers can milk the "ominous weather" metaphor for all it's worth and then some. It was enough to keep most people indoors, as if they needed any more excuses to do so after all of the past attacks, but for some people, it didn't bother them at all.

Rythmic used the ensuing terror to sneak out to Frontroom Hall, the stage where many famous musical acts had played over the years, and steal some of the most powerful equipment known to man. Giant subwoofers, smoke machines, amplifiers that went to 11... yes, Frontroom Hall had it all, and it was now all his.

After taking some considerable time to set everything up, Rythmic took out his special, custom-made guitar, and began jamming like he never had before. Yes, he was doing so in his own bedroom, to an audience that didn't exist, in a town that had quite a few problems at the moment, but dangit, he was rocking out.

He was playing a particular section of Floyd's "One Of These Days" when suddenly, all the windows in his room shattered. Apparently there was such a thing as too loud. Looking down to survey the damage, Rythmic noticed a surprising sight: Someone was down there, with a drum set, looking up and wondering why the rocking had stopped.

Suddenly curious and forgeting about all of the windows, Rythmic picked up right where he left off, closely listening for the sound of drums. Yes, the person below was playing, and in time!

After the song had finished, Rythmic ran outside to greet the man and ask if he was okay. He was in for another surprise on seeing him up close: The drummer was not dressed in the usual rock regalia of a T-shirt and jeans, rather, he was wearing a trenchcoat and fedora that perfectly matched the weather.

"Hello," the drummer said, "Lovely day for rocking, isn't it?"

"Well, the weather kind of sucks, but I guess any day is a good day to rock."

There was a pause as the man nodded in agreement.

"Say," Rythmic said, "I couldn't really hear you that well from inside... mind playing a bit of a solo for me? It's been a while since I've had accompaniment."

"Sure thing," the man said, grinning almost a little too widely. He began into his routine, with Rythmic listening eagerly. Rolls, rim shots, symbol hits, perfect bass... this guy had it all. But sometime through, Rythmic noticed that the drummer had hit a particular head in a particular way, and a particular sound had come out of it.

Unbeknownst to him, the drummer's hit had opened a secret compartment, sending a poison-tipped dart out, silently, at a good speed. A split second later it had connected with Rythmic's neck, and he fell down to the ground in an instant, already choking and spitting. It was over in less than a minute.

"Ba-dum KISH!" the man played, and then walked away.

Across town, Quintus.J.Cicero remained inside, wary that the two deaths from yesterday (not caused by TinCow's insanity on the execution platform, that is) had happened when the two victims had stepped outside for various reasons. While unaware that this was the precise way in which Rythmic had just passed, he knew that there was no way that anybody would get him out of his house, especially not in unseasonably cold weather.

He stayed upstairs, in a room with a good view of his property, just in case a mafioso tried to smoke him out or something. Armed with both a high-powered rifle as well as a hose, Quintus believed that he was prepared for any potential attack.

Then, a black Mercedes with what looked to be a shiny new windshield drove by, towing a large, driverless, moving van. It stopped at a position where the Mercedes was past his house and the back of the moving van was lined up with his front door. Squinting, Quintus could see that the moving company's logo had been crossed out. In its place were the shoddily-painted words "Red Imported Fire Ants".

Quintus gulped. For whatever reason, he was envisioning terrble things. Would a high-powered hose be enough to keep fire ants away?

The window of the Mercedes rolled down and the driver tossed out a projectile of some kind. It seemed to be giving off some sort of aroma, and (just Quintus's luck), it rolled right to the house's doorstep.

The back of the moving van's doors flew open and out marched a seemingly endless column of red ants. They were headed directly for Quintus's house. Horrified, Quintus took his eyes off the windows and ran to a spot where he had a view of his foyer; of course, the RIFAs entered in force.

Gripping the hose and muttering a silent prayer, Quintus began spraying water at his foyer, ruining a perfectly good floor and some furniture, in a desperate attempt to get rid of the ants. It was to no avail. Yes, the ants went flying, but they simply gripped the walls and ceiling and continued their march. Soon they had encompassed the entire foyer and were beginning to move upstairs.

Quintus was almost out of options. The way he saw it, he could continue spraying and eventually be devoured by the RIFAs... or jump and end it now. He was about to choose the latter, when he spied a way out.

"Power lines!" he muttered. "If I climb on these I can shimmy over to the next house and find a way out of here! Let's just see if they can support my weight... I think so, but barely... only one way to find out." And so he began his slow movement to the house across the street. Completely concentrating on putting one hand in front of the other, Quintus only noticed about halfway through that the mafioso was leaning on his Mercedes, watching him, and holding his shotgun.

"Targed pragdice," the mafioso said, and fired.

Quintus let go in pain, falling several feet in a heap. He thought that he would have died from the blast and the fall, but no - he was still alive, though barely, and fully aware, fully conscious...

...of the red imported fire ants now swarming over his body.

The mafioso, satisfied, got back into his Mercedes and drove away.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut gathered all the remaining villagers into the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "the Frontroom is officially facing a crisis. Our numbers have halved, exactly, in a matter of days. I suggest that we all stop screwing around and truly get to work finding the mafia if you want this scourge to end. Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (19)
Ichigo
RoadKill
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sasaki Kojiro
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
CountArach
Kommodus
Seamus Fermanagh
Kagemusha
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow

[GeneralHankerchief]

Tie vote, same rules apply. This time the lucky two are Sasaki and Kommodus.

You have 24 hours.

Day 5 tally:

Sasaki Kojiro: 2 (makaikhaan, Seamus Fermanagh)
Kommodus: (Gaius Scribonius Curio, Sigurd Fafnesbane)
makaikhaan: 1 (shlin28)
FactionHeir: 1 (Sarathos)
RoadKill: 1 (Beefy187)

Abstained: 3 (CountArach, Sasaki Kojiro, FactionHeir)
Didn't vote: Everybody else.

[GeneralHankerchief]

For the second straight day, Chief of Police Beirut was presiding over the town's voting ritual longer than he wished. Of course, he didn't want to do this at all, for that would mean there were no mafiosi, but still... that wasn't the point. The television beckoned.

After completing his tally of the run-off between Sasaki Kojiro and Kommodus, Beirut breathed an audible sigh of relief. There would be an execution. "Sasaki Kojiro," he boomed, "You are hereby found guilty of murder. Please make your way up to the execution platform."

As always, the crowd was all too happy to assist in this matter. Sasaki, still looking for a way that he could get out of this, was dragged up to the platform and thrown at Beirut's feet. He looked up at the Chief of Police.

"You're not going to read the definition of what I didn't do to me, are you?"

"No," said Beirut. "I learned my lesson the last time."

"You're not going to cut my tongue out and bury me alive with tarantulas, are you?"

"No."

"You're not going to kick me 300-style into the angry mob, are you?"

"Uh... no," said Beirut, silently cursing. This was taking too long.

"You're not going to immolate me while you fly away on your little helicopter-hat, are you?"

"No, I'm not!" said Beirut, his anger gettin the better of him. "I'm going to kill you in my own special way! No more questions!"

"What do you mean, 'no more questions?' Sasaki asked. I think I deserve knowing the way I'm going to die."

Off to the side, audible grunts could be heard from a group of short, stupid-looking people wearing black. They were all holding onto a rope which extended somewhere far off. The grunts slowly turned to groans. "Shut up, Epsilons," Beirut said. A couple more groans, and then there was silence. Turning back to Sasaki, he looked like he was going to say something but decided against it.

Sasaki continued, hoping he had found an opening. "I mean, it's my last day alive. Sure, you think I'm a mass murderer, but there's no way of PROVING it. And in other prisons, even the mass murderers that have been convicted by DNA testing, who have confessed to the crimes, and who have probably killed a couple of prison guards in failed escape attempts, get a nice last meal and some final comfort. And here I am, standing up here on an execution platform in cold weather, having cooperated. I think that maybe I deserve some final hours of comfort before my own impending death, especially considering there's no appeals process here, which usually take months and years."

This time, everybody groaned. The master manipulator was at it again; why couldn't Beirut see this?

"Well... uh..." The Chief of Police was stumbling over his words. "Okay, I suppose. Do you know how to cook?"

"Yes," Sasaki said.

"Go home and make yourself a last meal. I expect you back here within two hours."

"Two hours?" Sasaki said. "Two hours is not a proper time to prepare a proper seven-course meal!"

"Fine," snapped Beirut. "Five hours. And no more." And thus, with everyone in town staring in open-mouthed shock, as well as hatred, Sasaki calmly strolled to his house with an evil smirk on his face."

"Suckers," he muttered. "Five hours is plenty of time for me to pack up and get out of this plce."

Back at the execution platform, Beirut ordered everyone to stay, having to repeat it several times due to general complaining. He ignored it all, constantly checking his watch, waiting for something to happen. Finally, when about twenty minutes (the estimated amount of time it would take for Sasaki to walk back to his house) elapsed, Beirut spoke to the people holding the rope.

"All right, Eplisons," he said, "Let 'er go!"

Twenty minutes (walking distance) away, Sasaki Kojiro, and his entire house, was crushed by a massive, multi-ton weight dropping directly down. He had no idea it was coming or that he had been tricked.

Day 5a tally:

Sasaki Kojiro: 5 (Ichigo, Seamus Fermanagh, Gaius Scribonius Curio, KukriKhan, CountArach) :skull:
Kommodus: 3 (Sasaki Kojiro, discovery1, Sigurd Fafnesbane)

Abstained: 1 (FactionHeir)
Didn't vote: Everybody else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (18)
Ichigo
RoadKill
shlin28
makaikhaan
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
CountArach
Kommodus
Seamus Fermanagh
Kagemusha
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. The chill present since yesterday had not gone away; as a matter of fact, it seemed to have intensified overnight, providing for the faithful to believe that this was all an omen of terrible things to come.

shlin28 was passing his time by reading his favorite book, a certain novel penned by Koushun Takami. As opposed to more traditional tomes such as, say, the Bible, or something from the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, shlin gained comfort and drew strength from a 600-odd page description of Japanese high school students brutally murdering each other.

While shlin could only aspire to be one of those fictional students; out on an island with a small chance of survival, he nevertheless saw some similarities between what he was reading and his current situation. For example: In both circumstances, people were out to kill him. After that little detail, nothing else really mattered too much. And, as a result, precautions needed to be taken. shlin was therefore reading in his attic, with a winter coat on, and using a tiny flashlight as his only source of illumination.

In his book, a lot of the people that hid did pretty well. It was only when they made noise that they were discovered and thus disposed of. Nobody really happened upon a hiding place by chance. Heck, the same thing had happened in the Frontroom! Most notably, two days ago when both Crazed Rabbit and woad&fangs had bought it by leaving their hiding places. Thus, shlin was trying the same strategy. So, he was content to just sit and read.

Time passed by.

In the distance, shlin heard the sound of a car coming up his street, and then stopping, by the sound of it pretty closely. The engine, he could even tell from the attic, was of good quality. It wouldn't be surprising if the car in question was a Mercedes.

shlin froze. They were coming for him. If he just stayed where he was... he'd be fine... maybe...

He heard the sound of his door being broken open and the footsteps of a man running into the foyer. "Great," shlin thought, he was in. He strained to hear further, but... nothing. Perhaps the mafioso, not identifying an alarm system (for there was none) had gotten confused and left. Or maybe he was only there for supplies. Or maybe... he was just sneaking around and meticulously checking every room for his prey.

He checked his watch and noted the second hand was on the twelve. He continued to strain to hear any sign of mafioso activity downstairs. After hearing nothing, he fiddled with his coat for a while, zipping and unzipping it repeatedly. After that had been done to satisfaction, he picked up the book and kept reading it, but only got through a sentence before he put it down in fright. He strained to hear again, heard nothing, and picked up the book again before putting it down again. He checked his watch.

The second hand was on the one.

This was taking too long. It would be better, a lot better, if he could just hear some sign of something, anything, that the mafioso had left or not; the sound of an engine, the sound of something breaking, just anything to break the monotony and the terrible fear that is known as silence!

Finally, some relief. He heard the sound of another door being thrown open, this time a lot louder and closer.

He panicked. The mafioso was on the second floor! He was closer, he knew where shlin was, he had to get a weapon-! Abandoning his position, he scrambled around the attic, hoping against hope that there was a gun, or a bat, or something he could use to defend himself - come on, it had to be there-

One floor below, the mafioso heard the racket being made and smiled. Finally, shlin had revealed himself. Calmly pumping his shotgun, he aimed and blasted at the section of the ceiling where shlin was tromping around in the attic directly above him.

Success! The entire section of the ceiling that wasn't hit by the fire fell away, as did everything above it, including shlin. Bleeding from one of his feet, shlin fell hard and couldn't move. Immobilized, he could really do nothing except listen to his pursuer.

"Dod't abaddod your plads just begause you're a bit sgared," the mafioso said, and fired again. That was the end of shlin28, who was not given an opportunity to take his killer's advice.

Coincidentally, RoadKill was reading the exact same book that shlin was (well, not the EXACT same book, but he was reading an identical copy, if one wanted to be picky) and also strategizing based on what he had read in there. While shlin was focused on the hiders, RK was instead interested in the hunters.

The most lethal characters in the book were those who had actively sought out their prey and prepared to fight. Yes, their survival rate wasn't that good, but they always took out one victim before finally succumbing. Considering this as well as the fact that the mafiosi probably weren't expecting a counter-attack aside from Beirut's woefully ineffective lynching system, RoadKill liked his odds of taking somebody out.

It was decided, then. RoadKill would take justice into his own hands. He was sick and tired of the lack of results and reasoned that soon there would be an attempt on his own life. If pre-emptive strikes worked for world leaders, it would work for him, too!

Packing two SMGs he had constructed from spare parts as well as a sniper rifle for long-distance work, RK set off from his house, dreaming dreams of glory and victory.

...He would catch a mafioso in the act, and challenge him to a duel, which of course the mafioso, caught in the act, could not resist, and even if he did, RoadKill would simply mow him down as he retreated. Then, the two of them would fight, preferably in an arena with the crowd cheering him on, and he would be their champion, saving them from the forces of darkness. And the two of them would go at it, shooting and ducking, running out of ammo until there wasn't much left, and then finally, RK would deliver the blow, wounding his opponent, and then he would come out of hiding to finish the job, and the mafioso would be plading for mercy, but RK would give him none, just as the mafioso would have given no mercy to the town, and then it would be over with RoadKill as the victorious savior, and he would get a medal, maybe even Beirut's job, and receive much adulation and love from the townspeople, and the women, oh yes, the women would be all over him, he would forever look more desirable to them, and they would-

SCREECH! A black car roared around a turn, now zooming along the street. Its driver leaned out the window and blasted a shotgun directly into RK's chest. With the black car now gone just as fast as it came, RoadKill fell, weapons still in hand. He died within eyesight of his house. The adventure would never be completed.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut gathered the remaining citizens of the Frontroom into the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, it has come to my attention that the mafia are still doing their job of reducing this town's population. If you wish for this trend to cease, then I suggest you had start lynching the right people.

"Reducing population?" someone said. "Could you be any more insensitive? These are people's lives we're talking about here!"

"Indeed we are," said Beirut. "Thus, once again, I suggest that you start getting these right. Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (16)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
CountArach
Kommodus
Seamus Fermanagh
Kagemusha
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro

[GeneralHankerchief]

*Note: I apologize in advance for the poor quality of this scene. Blame it on a lack of sleep. Please assume that the following is perfectly-spelled, and longer to boot. Final apologies go to the lynched, who deserves a better death.*

At last, finally, there was a clear lynch target without there having to be a run-off vote. Chief of Police Beirut, realizing this, eagerly counted down the final seconds on his watch, ready to close voting precisely at the time limit. There would be no last-minute surge, no last-second save. Instead there was...

"All right, gentlemen," he said, "The voting period is now over. And by the looks of it, it looks like we have our guilty party. Seamus Fermanagh, could you please approach the voting platform?"

Seamus, wearing a "ah, so be it" look on his face, complied, albeit slowly and deliberately.

"Well," he asked, "What elaborate death do you have planned for me? I didn't think you could top the immolation combined with your helicopter hat, but I do admit the giant weight and tricking Sasaki was pretty special. So what's it going to be? Are you going to launch me into the stratosphere and light me up like a firework?"

"No," said Beirut. He took out his pistol, cocked it, and blasted Seamus right between the eyes.

"Shaking it up a little bit," Beirut said. "Hopefully I won't need to do it again tomorrow. Let's find out if you did your job," he finished, addressing the remaining townies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (15)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
CountArach
Kommodus
Kagemusha
discovery1
FactionHeir
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh

PMs please. WoGs will happen at the end of the next day phase.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. However, this silence would not last, as it was pierced by the engines of two cars making their rounds in town.

The black Mercedes and its driver were on the prowl, searching for another victim, preferably to drive-by blast someone as they were walking by, as before. However, consiidering the intelligence of the remaining townies (how else were they still living, unless of course the mafia had simply decided it was not quite yet their time?) the mafioso knew that this would be highly unlikely.

This soon proved to be the case, as there was simply no one to be found walking outside. After crossing the town at least three times over and wasting a good amount of expensive gas (why oh why did he not rob his victims after killing them? the mafioso thought), he adjusted his strategy. There were other ways of telling where people were.

Upon driving the first public location, the mafioso scanned the parking lot, and - success! One single, lonely car was present. Apparently, someone was making themselves comfortable in the Frontroom Library whilst their comrades perished. Unfortnately for this someone, he was too careless. The car was a dead giveaway. The mafioso smirked as he gripped a shotgun and strolled inside.

CountArach heard the door open and, caught by surprise, ducked under the table, sending his reading material flying in his hurry to find a spot in sufficiciency. The mafioso saw his pitiful efforts and laughed out loud. Time to play with his food before eating it.

"Good God, man, what are you doing?" he said. "I'm not here to harm you."

CA wasn't convinced one bit. "Then why are you holding that shotgun in your hands?"

"What, this? I'm looking for a book on how to properly handle weaponry. There's no point in defending myself if I don't know how to properly work this thing."

"I... see..." said CA, taken aback by the smoothness of the mafioso's response. He got out from under the table, probably realizing that the mafioso would have shot him either way by now. Instead, the mafioso walked up to the table and picked up the books that he had sent flying earlier. Unsurprisingly, they were CA's favorite works, the complete collection of Karl Marx.

"Ah," said the mafioso, "a budding revolutionary, eh?"

"I like his ideas," said CA, now somewhat defensively. Instead of preparing to get killed, he was preparing to defend his political beliefs. Not as life-threatening, perhaps, but certainly more annoying. But the mafioso surprised him once again.

"It's interesting how our current situation is being played out and how much it relates to Marx's writing," the mafioso said. "What do you think Marx would think of our lynching system?"

"Well..." CA said, thinking, "He'd be happy that so much direct power was in the hands of the people. That the proletariat decided their own destiny. I think... I think he'd like it."

"But the results?"

"Well," said CA, "We don't know yet. To my knowledge, nobody's been killed today, so that might mean something... And besides, who's to say that we would have been better off with another system? Here we get to discuss ideas, share information, make reasonable debates, and come to an informed decision where the plurality agrees. I think it's the best we can do, really."

"Interesting," said the mafioso. "What about the actual commmission of these acts? I know that a lot of people died on their own property."

"I think this helps Marx's case, actually," said CA. "People aren't defending their private property properly. If it was all in the hands of, say, the government, I think there'd be less murders. You'll notice that the mafia haven't killed anybody in the town square."

The mafioso paused, saying nothing for over a minute, as if drinking all of this information in.

Finally, he spoke again, making a slight adjustment with his hands on the shotgun. "Let's move on a bit. I'm sure you know what Marx has to say about religion, right?"

"Of course," said CA, now fully-engrossed in the discussion. "He said it is the opiate of the masses."

"Correct. I think, had Marx known about our situation, he would have added a corollary to that statement," the mafioso said lazily.

"And what would that be?"

"Religion is the opiate of the masses, but the mafia are the predators of the masses." In a flash, he had his shotgun out, pumped it, and blasted the young, budding socialist who would never engage in another political discussion again. The mafioso walked out as, in a touch of irony, all of Marx's works begun to stain red.

The second car driving around was going at a much slower pace than the Mercedes. All in all, one would consider it the polar opposite of a typical mafioso transport vehicle: It was large, slow, white, and announced its presence to all not by gunfire, but by music.

The jaunty, innocent tune of the ice cream truck played as it was driven around.

It looked completely normal, more suited to happier times in the Frontroom. As previously mentioned, it was white, with a huge ice cream cone painted on the sides with a ridiculous grin. The music, of course, was played in a major key and repeated every couple of minutes, and it was cheery enough to lighten up even the most sour of moods. Perhaps the only thing that would have tipped anybody off that there was something wrong was the name: "Luigi's Ice Cream" was painted on the truck, but then again, that didn't necessarily mean anything, and besides, the Russian Mafia and Japanese Yakuza were more prevalent and deadly now, anyways. At a closer glance, one could read the sign that said: "Try our Chocolate Extraordinaiire!"

The ice cream truck drove by, looking for customers; someone to buy a refreshing snack on a hot day. Of course, there were no takers. Nevertheless, the truck kept moving and playing its cheery song.

Finally, someone came out. Fully enticed by the song and hot after a hard few hours of work, Joe Monks ran out, a ton of cash stuffd in his fist. At the sight of this, the driver poked his head out.

"Lobely day, nobe?" he said. "Whad'll id be?"

"Hmm," said Joe. "I'll try your Chocolate Extraordinaire."

The driver nodded and disappeared back into the truck. About a minute later he came back out with a massive chocolate cone. Joe paid and the truck began driving away. Satisfied, he took his first lick.

At that instant, the music on the truck suddenly halved in tempo and changed into a sinister, minor key. Unfortunately for Joe Monks, he didn't notice, too engrossed in his Chocolate Extraordinaire. He took another lick. Machine gun nozzles popped out of the back of the truck.

He took another lick. They fired.

After a few seconds, the machine guns retreated back into the truck and the music returned to normal, leaving Joe Monks and most of his ultra-tech lick-sensing Chocolate Extraordinaire on the hot pavement. It hadn't occurrred to him what the Extraordinaire had meant at all.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut gathered the remaining villagers into the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he said, "two orders of business today. First of all, yeah, the mafia are still here, so you'd do well to get it right this time. Second of all, we found the following slip of paper in Joe Monks's ice cream."

Beirut passed it around to everybody and they read the piece of paper, while stained with chocolate ice cream, was still intelligible.

"Quelques lettres seront trouvées, mais seulement quelques pièces s'adaptent au énigme."

"So yeah," Beirut said. "The French may be a bit off, but you get the idea. Get voting!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (13)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Caius
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
Tiberius of the Drake
KukriKhan
Kommodus
Kagemusha
discovery1
Joe Monks

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh

A reminder that WoGs will happen at the end of this phase, or, if a tie occurs, at the end of that vote.

[GeneralHankerchief]

The first day of voting was a distant memory, Chief of Police Beirut mused as he oversaw the procedures once again. Gone, most of all, aside from the people themselves, was the liveliness, the activity. Even removing the fact that the Frontroom, with tonight's execution, would be down to less than one third of its usual capacity, the people just seemed... distant. Inactive. Not really paying attention.

That, Beirut knew, would be the ultimate victory for the mafia.

So, he reasoned, it was time to take matters into his own hands. After collecting the (extremely light) ballot box, he went through it. Of course, the votes were few.

"All right," he said. "Hands up. Who all voted?"

Five hands rose.

"And how many of you voted for an actual person?"

One dropped.

"And how many of you voted for the person to be lynched, AKA FactionHeir?"

One more dropped.

"So," Beirut said, "Three total. Three out of five out of thirteen. This is pretty friggin' pathetic, if you ask me. These are your lives we're talking about here and you're content to sit back and do nothing. I mean, I've heard more from voices in the wind than you chumps. You want to sit back and get killed? Fine! I'll do it for you! FactionHeir, get up here!"

FH, who had been, for his part, fairly active in the voting process if not the voting itself, complied, hoping that Beirut's anger at the townspeople would somehow get him out of the execution. He stared at the Chief of Police, nervous but still trying to convey a willing and helpful expression.

"FactionHeir," Beirut said, "I want you to demonstrate what happens to people when they don't take part in the voting process. In case, in their obvious stupor, they've forgotten what has happened to their dear friends over this past week. What awaits us ALL if we don't start picking up the pace." He shoved a gun into FH's hands and whispered into his ear, pointing at various people in the audience.

FH gave Beirut a questioning look, but the Chief of Police simply nodded. FH shrugged, and without further pause he pointed and shot Caius, Tiberius of the Drake, and Kommodus in the head. All three went down, shocking the rest of the villagers. For the first time, FH spoke.

"There, Beirut," he said, voice slightly quivering. "I've done what you asked. I've helped, I hope, get the town to be more active in the voting process. Since I've done you a favor, do you think I could... you know... get off?"

Beirut simply laughed. "My dear FactionHeir, while they may have only done so in a whisper, the town has spoken. You do have the most votes." And before FH could say anything, or even groan, in reply, Beirut pulled an axe out, seemingly from nowhere, and decapitated his victim.

"I hope you've learned your lesson today," the Chief of Police said. "Time to go home."

Day 7 tally:

FactionHeir: 3 (Gaius Scribonius Curio, Beefy187, Kagemusha) :skull:
Beefy187: 1 (FactionHeir)

Abstained: 1 (KukriKhan)
Didn't vote: Everyone else.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (9)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
Beefy187
KukriKhan
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir

PMs please. Elite Ferret is hereby banned from Mafia IX. There will be an announcement come the start of next day phase.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. Massive thunderheads drifted about overhead. Very soon there would be noise. It had already begun to pour, adding to the overall dreary, bleak atmosphere.

Beefy187 was by now very concerned with all the murder and lynchings in the Kingdom of Peace and Love, but after being cooped up in his house for over a week watching the same movies over and over, he decided to do what had traditionally been done for decades on these kinds of rainy days: risk going to the video store.

Upon entering he was somewhat surprised to see the counter manned by an impeccably dressed man in a fedora and trenchcoat. The man looked up, spotting Beefy.

"Excellent day, isn't it," he said. "The sun's out, the birds are singing, and there's not a cloud in the sky. It's days like these that make you glad to be alive."

"Uh... what?" Beefy asked. "I just came from outdoors and it was pouring rain. I think it was starting to thunder, too."

"Oh, you mean outside," said the man, still smiling. His unwavering grin was beginning to scare Beefy. "No, I was quoting a line from a movie I had just been watching before you entered. So, how may I help you?"

"Uh, um, I'd like to rent a movie..." replied Beefy, "...do you have anything to recommend? Given the current situation, something about crime would be appropriate, but preferably something with a good ending. Maybe The Untouchables."

The man's smile never wavered. "The Untouchables, eh? So not a classic like, oh I don't know, The Godfather? That really is an excellent movie, well-worked, fantastically shot, wonderful storyline, and on top of that, the acting really is superb.'

Somewhat thrown by the grinning man's enthusiasm, Beefy tried to find the words to disillusion him. "Yes, well, I... ah, you see, I've seen that one before. Now, The Untouchables, well, that one, I haven't yet, and..."

His voice trailed off with the clerk still watching him. When Beefy finally went silent, the clerk entered back into the conversation. "Another thing I like about The Godfather is the realism present that you just don't see in The Untouchables."

"What's that?" Beefy asked.

"The mafia wins." Dumbfounded, Beefy watched the man draw a revolver from his pocket and fire, once. As Beefy's lifeless body hit the floor the man gave a wry smile and drew a Cuban cigar from his pocket, lit it, and walked slowly from the scene, out into the rain.

In the same rain and thunder, the black Mercedes drove on, its shiny new windshield being wiped for the first time in the deluge. Instead of searching the town for persons, the driver had a new tactic. Since there were so few townspeople left, it would be fruitless to search for them at random. So instead, the mafioso had a print-out of the home address of everyone who was still alive.

Taking the paper in his hands, the mafioso ran down the list with one finger and then paused at a particular name. Yes, that one would do... it was close by, as well.

He turned onto his soon-to-be victim's street, and turned off the headlights. In the pouring rain, his black Mercedes would be nearly invisible. A flash of lightning illuminated the addresses, which was all the mafioso needed. After another flash had confirmed that he had the right house, the mafioso stepped out into the rain, his trusty shotgun in hand.

He strode up to the front door, already dripping wet, and prepared to kick it in. Instead, however, he found the door flying back TOWARD him, crushing his already-broken nose. Screaming and cursing unintelligibly, he dropped the shotgun as both hands went to his poor, tortured nose.

Out of the rain stepped Sigurd Fafnesbane, shirtless, long hair flowing. He was gripping a very long axe and smiling.

"So, we meet at last," Sigurd said. "You have come to my house to kill me, but it will not be that easy. You will have to earn this kill. We shall duel, as in the old style. Defend yourself!"

"I habe no weapod," the mafioso said, temporarily stopping Sigurd.

"Your weapon is lying on the ground," Sigurd said. "If I were you, I'd make an attempt to get it, to even the odds. However, this is not going to - HAPPEN!" He swung his axe, aiming for the mafioso's neck. He only hit air, however, as the mafioso dropped to the ground to avoid the blow.

The mafioso, whose clothes were already soaking due to all the rain and the blood pouring out of his nose, now began rolling on the grass to avoid Sigurd's downward chops. His first roll was out of sheer survival, missing the axe by a hair, but he quickly realized that he could strategize his rolls. His next two dodges, both far too close for comfort, moved him closer to the shotgun, which was now almost within reach...

A quick, unexpected chop from Sigurd nixed that idea, blocking the mafioso from his shotgun and also catching his suitjacket. Sigurd, thinking he had pinned his victim, drew a second, smaller axe and prepared to use it but the mafioso had simply rolled out of his suitjacket, leaving him only in his shirt and tie, both of which were soaked.

His tie. Working furiously, he undid the knot, and with one ferocious yank got it out of his collar. Scrambling backwards, tie in hand, the mafioso worked to put some more distance between himself and Sigurd.

"Eben iv I die, you'll ged pneumodiub ad die frob dat," he said.

"Maybe I will," said Sigurd, who had left the first axe pinned to the suitjacket and was using the smaller one, "But at least I'll have taken you with me."

He drew back his axe and prepared to swing once again. However, this time the mafioso was prepared. He drew his tie and cracked it forward like a whip. Hooking around Sigurd's axe, the tie yanked it from his hands and sent it harmlessly flying far away from the battle. Sigurd had a slightly surprised look on his face but recovered quickly, turning around and making for the first axe.

The mafioso cracked his tie again, this time wrapping around Sigurd's leg. The mafioso pulled, sending Sigurd face-first into the ground, still without a weapon. Satisfied, he began crawling, scrambling, anything, moving his body as fast as he could toward the shotgun, now without fear of being turned into mafioso sushi.

Sigurd, wiping his eyes free of mud, glanced around and gasped. He saw what the mafioso was doing, so his trajectory. He had to get... there... first...

It would have been a footrace, but both participants were down on all fours, moving as fast as they could through the muck that was formerly a well-kept lawn to the shotgun. Sigurd was more physically fit and was moving faster, but the mafioso was closer and had the better angle...

The mafioso got his hands on the gun a split second before Sigurd did, which was just enough time for him to turn around and club Sigurd in the face without. The viking warrior was sent sprawling, lying spread-eagled on the ground, now bleeding in the face himself. The mafioso, meanwhile, calmly got up, pumped his gun, and blasted Sigurd in the chest. Touching his wreck of a nose, the mafioso paused, and then for good measure, shot Sigurd in the head.

"You know," he said to the corpse, "if you had cobe out the door wib a gud, I would habe been dead. Sobetides you should just shoot."

He walked back to the Mercedes and drove off.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut gathered all the remaining villagers into the town square in order to make an announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "There obviously aren't that many more of us. Our successes against the mafia, to put it one way, have sorely been lacking. You have to get this one right!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (7)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Gaius Scribonius Curio
Sarathos
KukriKhan
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks
Beefy187
Sigurd Fafnesbane

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir

[GeneralHankerchief]

Forgot to make the announcement in the kill post.

Mafia VIII has officially entered the Endgame stage. This means that voting "abstain" is no longer allowed. You MUST vote for someone or it will not be counted as a "no vote". Enough "no votes" and you get Wogged, and yes, the threat of a Wogging is still there.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Thirty-eight little townies standing in a line,
Two got killed to start this rhyme;
Thirty-six little townies all terrified,
They chose one of them to be buried alive.

Thirty-five little townies not ready to die,
Two more did so though with ducks nearby;
Thirty-three little townies ready to lynch a rat,
Beirut did "Sparta" and that was that.

Thirty-two little townies planting a grove,
One smoked and the other drove;
Thirty little townies needing to think,
They banded together and lynched peverpink.

Twenty-nine little townies preparing for the worst,
But two of them still went off in a hearse;
Twenty-seven little townies living in a rut,
TinCow was lynched and then he went nuts.

Nineteen little townies, all of them scared,
One was eaten and one was snared;
Seventeen little townies feeling the pinch,
Sasaki mouthed off and got his standard lynch.

Sixteen little townies, two reading books,
Their plans were flawed and thus they got cooked;
Fourteen little townies feeling quite trapped,
They lynched Seamus, who died in a snap.

Thirteen little townies all ready to scream,
Two more died, one via ice cream;
Eleven little townies, some unable to care,
They all died along with FactionHeir.

Nine little townies out in the rain,
Beefy and Sigurd fell in extreme pain;
Seven little townies in quite a big fix,
They lynched Curio and then there were six.

Six little townies couldn't take it anymore,
Only so hoping they wouldn't be four.

Day 8 tally:
Gaius Scribonius Curio: 2 (Kagemusha, KukriKhan) :skull:
Kagemusha: 1 (Gaius Scribonius Curio)
KukriKhan: 1 (Ichigo)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (6)
Ichigo
makaikhaan
Sarathos
KukriKhan
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks
Beefy187
Sigurd Fafnesbane

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir
Gaius Scribonius Curio

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet. With six townies left (six little townies) to inhabit a rather large stretch of land, silence ruled the day. At least, it did for a little while.

KukriKhan was driving around - not to deliver mail as usual for there was both no mail to be delivered and no one to deliver it to - but to relieve his spirits after the previous night's execution. It was his vote that had doomed Curio and ever since the lynch (before it, really) he had been questioning the move. The disease of doubt was gnawing at him.

"Indecision really can kill," he thought to himself. "We all just have to hope that I was right," he continued thinking as he turned onto a long stretch of what was formerly a bustling avenue.

Almost on cue, a figure rushed out into the road ahead, brandishing a shotgun. At that point, two things started happening in slow motion.

The first was that Kukri, out of blind reflex and panic of potentially harming another innocent individual, yanked his foot off the gas and slammed on the brakes as hard as he could. The sound of half of his tires being left on the road behind him was interminable, and Kukri just hoped he would be able to stop in time, not at all noticing the second thing that was happening...

...which was the figure on the road pumping and leveling his shotgun directly at Kukri's mail truck. Time slowed down even further. The figure's finger moved towards the trigger... it made contact... it was pulling the trigger back...

*BOOM!*

The truck's windshield shattered, making it the second vehicle in the Frontroom to do so that past week. Unfortunately for Kukri, his fate was much worse than a broken nose, however, as he immediately felt impacts in his right leg and shoulder. Losing control, the mail truck swerved wildly, finally coming to rest only after it had ruined several parked (and abandoned) cars.

"Oog..." Well past thinking about past mistakes, Kukri could only mumble incoherently in pain as he struggled to undo his seat belt and miraculously step onto the tarmac. Of course, his right leg, shredded by the blast, collapsed, and Kukri moaned as he hit the ground, twisting to get a view of the man marching toward him, shotgun still leveled.

The moans turned into screams as he realized that, in fact, he was going to die. That he was in intense pain. That there were a thousand dreams that would never be fulfilled. Punctuated by the sounds of various car alarms going off, it made for a ghastly, and yet appropriate, sound. Nevertheless, the mafioso, who by now had approached Kukri (who was trying to crawl away, to no avail) spoke, and his voice resonated above the din, albeit somewhat difficult to understand.

"You chode wrog. You pay the pride. You lode."

The shotgun fired once again. Five little townies.

On the other hand, Ichigo had taken the completely opposite mindset of Kukri. Despite the murders, lynchings, and general aura of terror afflicting the Frontroom, was in high spirits. Not quite realizing the danger, he still regarded the whole situation as a joke. But, like Kukri, he was just as wrong.

Taking a walk to enjoy the air, he failed to notice the significance of the black Mercedes swinging around the corner behind him. Spotting the car but still not comprehending, he paused to wave at the driver, a man dressed in a trenchcoat and whose face was strangely hidden by a fedora. He saw the driver wave back.

"What a nice car," Ichigo said to himself. "What a nice day. What a nice man."

Once again he failed to notice the entire picture. Mainly, in the wave, the hand was not open in greeting, but closed; wrapped around an SMG that was pointed right at him.

Ichigo fell to the ground, riddled with bullets, with a smile on his face. The car's speed didn't alter one bit as it drove away.

Later that day, Chief of Police Beirut gathered the four remaining villagers into the town square in order to make announcement.

"Gentlemen," he began, "There are four of you left. At least one of you is in the mafia, judging by today's kills. If it's more than one, we're all doomed, and the mafia is just playing with us. If it's one, however... there is hope. Get the lynch right today, and we are saved. Decimated, perhaps, but saved nonetheless. Lynch the wrong person, though... and it's the last vote you'll ever be part of, either way."

Six little townies whose luck had been so poor,
Their fears were realized and they were now four;
Four little townies who weren't meant to be,
Hoping it would stop after they were three.

~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (4)
makaikhaan
Sarathos
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks
Beefy187
Sigurd Fafnesbane
KukriKhan
Ichigo

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir
Gaius Scribonius Curio

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Final round. As such, it will last 48 hours instead of the usual 24. Best of luck, and make it good. :bow:

GH

[GeneralHankerchief]

Sunset.

Mist swirled around the town square as the lonely four little townies were casting their votes, adding to the gloomy atmosphere present. Even though the mafia had only been present for a little over a week, their effectiveness was excellent. Nature was already beginning to reclaim the Frontroom. Gardens were overgrown. Weeds were beginning to pop up between the various cracks in the concrete. Strands of ivy spread, unchecked.

None of this was of any concern to Chief of Police Beirut, however, or his four remaining charges. Again, the swirling mist seemed to have more of a voice than the four lonely townies, but this was because there were only four of them left. Four of them. A seemingly weak bulwark against the mist that threatened to engulf and swallow them all up, but all they had was each other.

And not even that. For out of those four, one, possibly even two of them, was the one who had brought the pestilence in the first place. They were all leaning on each other, but if the one stepped away, they would all collapse. That was the town's goal on this misty evening, to find the saboteur. The killer. Find the killer, and pray that it was the right one, that it was the right one and that they had already gotten his partner.

Discussion was mostly quiet. The two opposing sides, Kagemusha and makaikhaan, had cast their votes against each other early. Their arguments had been made to discovery1 and Sarathos; khaan in his voice of reason and Kage in his desperate pleas, trying to do some last-minute detective work. Too little, too late, perhaps, unless it was one last deception before his final blow. Disco and Sarathos listened silently, deliberated, and one after another, shuffled to the voting booth and dropped the little papers in. After this task had been completed, Beirut walked over, equally silently. No formal proclamation was needed. They were all past that.

He read the votes after taking them out of the box.

"makaikhaan."

It was all that was said. It was all that needed to be said.

khaan's reaction was understated, as was appropriate. He simply buried his face in his hands and paused, not walking up to the execution platform. Not yet. Beirut took him by the arm and together they walked to the execution platform, with Beirut not so much dragging him as he had done so many people in the past, but rather helping him.

No speeches. No formal announcement of the votes. The two men stood up there on the platform, with three more watching below. The dozens of souls that had been there before, stood there in the past, were also present, also silently watching. It was over quickly. Beirut flashed his knife, slit khaan's throat, and watched as he dropped and his life slowly ended.

All of them watched as khaan's blood seeped off the platform and onto the town square proper. Would it be the last blood spilled?

Without official dismissal, the last three townies went their separate ways and walked home through the mist, hoping it wouldn't swallow them up whole.

Four little townies ready to be free,
But they still had work to do and thus they were three;
Three little townies, all just about done,
All of them hoping there wouldn't be one.

Day 9 tally:
makaikhaan: 3 (Kagemusha, Sarathos, discovery1) :skull:
Kagemusha: 1 (makaikhaan)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive: (3)
Sarathos
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks
Beefy187
Sigurd Fafnesbane
KukriKhan
Ichigo

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir
Gaius Scribonius Curio
makaikhaan

~~~~~~~~~

If you have a role, please don't spoil the surprise until the final scene is posted until tomorrow. You're in my game a little while longer, I may as well keep you in suspense until then. :evilgrin:

[GeneralHankerchief]

Day breaks in the Frontroom. All is quiet.

They were three: Sarathos, the innocent. discovery1, the goof. Kagemusha, the target.

Sarathos, the innocent, had spent the night in a 24-hour diner, ordering coffee every now and then from a counter waiter that didn't exist. Exhaustion and fear had propelled him to this state. He would order to thin air, wait five minutes, remember that he was due a coffee, and then realize that the place was deserted. Sighing, he would pour himself a coffee and munch on whatever was easiest to prepare. Once the effects of the caffeine wore off, he would repeat the process.

He was unarmed. His back was to the door, unless he had turned around on his stool and was staring out the windows. He was unprepared for a mafia assault, but was all too ready for death. If it came, it came. Maybe then he would see his dead friends.

"Coffee," he said to no one in particular. "Fill 'er up."

A pause.

"Oh yeah."

He forced himself off his stool and trudged parallel to the counter, heading to the point where he could turn and get to the coffee machine. He was pouring himself another cup when the little bells above the diner's door jingled.

In entered discovery1, the goof, looking wild-eyed and very much awake.

"Ah," he said in a jittery voice, "You've got coffee, eh? Good idea. This'll keep us awake and make for a good weapon." He pushed Sarathos out of the way and headed straight for the coffee maker, making some funny motions with his hands as he poured himself a cup. He took a huge swig, shook his head, and then refilled his cup.

"A good weapon against who?" Sarathos asked.

"Against Kage, of course!" Disco said. "Didn't you hear them last night?"

"Hear who?"

"The spirits, of course! Weren't they keeping you up?! They were whispering to me, saying that we had chosen wrong. That Kage was coming to kill us. That we had failed them and that we were all dead!"

"I think you're nuts. You're just trying to lull me into a false sense of security," Sarathos said.

"Maybe I am," Disco said, a crazy grin lighting up on his face. "But then again, I could just kill you now. Look at you, you're a mess. And you're unarmed. Not the best use in a fight." And before Sarathos could say anything, Disco suddenly changed course. "I'm going to the bathroom," he said, taking his coffee with him.

Sarathos was unamused. "Hide the shotgun behind the toilet, did you? How unoriginal of you." Disco merely laughed as he walked through the men's room door.

Sarathos calmly sipped his coffee when the bells jingled once again. Kagemusha entered, carrying a massive katana and searching for signs of life.

"BYAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

Out of nowhere, the bathroom door flung open and discovery1 flew out, running as fast as he could. Once in range, he flung his coffee at Kage's face. It made contact, of course, spilling the hot drink all over. Disco wasn't finished, however, not stopping his charge until he had sent both himself and Kage flying.

"OW!" Kage screamed, trying to get the coffee off his face. "What on earth are you doing, you crazy idiot? You could have gotten me killed!!!"

"That's the idea," Disco said calmly, or as calmly as one could be after running out of a bathroom, screaming a battle cry, and tackling somebody. "Better you than me!"

"It's not either of us!" Kage protested.

"Well then, who is it? Sarathos?"

"No. If you shut up and listen, I'll tell you. Sarathos, you two. Come on over." Deliberately as ever, Sarathos made his way from his stool to near the door of the diner. Together the three sat, Kage with his katana, Sarathos with his coffee, and Disco with... well, his wits.

"All right," Kage continued, "So I've been doing some thinking. One of the killers has a broken nose, right?"

"Right," the other two said in unison.

"And none of us do, right?"

"Right."

"BUT. The broken nose killer was definitely active yesterday, right?"

"Yeah, he nailed Kukri."

"Exactly," said Kage. "And possibly Ichigo too, but we don't know for sure on that one since it was a drive-by. But we definitely got at least one."

"Okay, so what about the other?"

"Well," said Kage, "Think about it. With Ichigo's kill yesterday, it was a drive-by. The killer had his face masked by the fedora. This is the first time it happened, since before the killer was always smiling and engaging his victims in conversation. It's how we could distinguish between the two killers. But that didn't happen last time."

"So what does it mean?"

"Thinking logically, there were six of us before Kukri and Ichigo died. One of us was definitely mafia. But, if two of us were... why didn't they go for it all? If there was a ratio of two mafiosi to four townies, what would have happened yesterday is they could have killed Kukri and Ichigo as normal. It would have then been 2:2, and nothing could have stopped the mafia from simply shooting us at the execution, and Beirut too, for good measure. So the other mafioso had to have died before yesterday."

"This is all very good," said discovery1, "But you're leaving a possibility out."

"What's that?"

"Suppose the broken nose mafioso died first. That just left the well-dressed mafioso, who could have faked the broken nose to fool the town. Nobody would know since his nose would look fine up close, right?"

Everybody froze. Could this mean - could this mean they had failed?

"Just fooling. C'mon, let's call up Beirut and tell him what's up." Together they walked to the diner's phone and watched as Kage dialed the numbers to Beirut's office.

"Frontroom police department," Chief of Police Beirut answered. "What's up?"

"Beirut, it's Kage. The three of us are at the diner. I think we're safe."

"Well, Kage, that's an interesting thought. My buddy Officer Clegane with the OBI called me last night after the execution and said the wiretappers had given him some interesting evidence. According to him, two people stood out and they had been making incriminating calls."

There was a pause. Everyone in the diner looked at each other, instinctively. "Well?" Kage demanded. "Who were they?!"

"They were...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...Gaius Scribonius Curio and makaikhaan."

"So we're saved then."

"Yeah, guess so," Beirut said nonchalantly over the phone. "Congrats, boys. You survived."

The diner erupted with whooping. Three men, three little townies who had been through hell, made enough noise for the entire town. Here they were, in a diner, ready for death, and they had lived through it. They had made it. But... there was still one thing nagging at them.

"Beirut," Sarathos said through the phone, "How come the OBI involved themselves in this? They've never done this sort of thing before."

"Ah," the Chief of Police said, "I contacted them when I realized that we had no resident Detective."

"What?" There was no Detective? Impossible!

"Yeah, how about that? I tried to tell you guys that we were 'sans investigateur' but nobody picked up on my hint! Oh, well, guess it doesn't matter to you boys now."

Beirut hung up, leaving the three of them to celebrate. Both this day and many others, they had survived.

Three little townies who were finally free,
After many tough nights, they were still three.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is the final status list. Congrats to those who survived.

Survived: (3)
Sarathos
Kagemusha
discovery1

Suicide/Wrath of God:
|Sith|R|AntiWarmanCake88
Mithrandir
Fenring
Lord Winter
georgeman51
Caius
Tiberius of the Drake
Kommodus

Killed:
Tratorix
Omanes Alexandrapolites
Andres
Craterus
LittleGrizzly
TevashSzat
Crazed Rabbit
woad&fangs
Rythmic
Quintus.J.Cicero
shlin28
RoadKill
CountArach
Joe Monks
Beefy187
Sigurd Fafnesbane
KukriKhan
Ichigo

Executed:
Privateerkev
Elite Ferret
peverpink
TinCow
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus Fermanagh
FactionHeir
Gaius Scribonius Curio
makaikhaan

Result:

TOWNSPEOPLE VICTORY! :medievalcheers:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Congrats on another great game, everybody!!! :yes: Are you surprised? I must admit, I thought the mafia had it in the bag, but once again, the town came through. Let's have a big round of applause to khaan and Curio for giving it their all! :cheerleader:

Commentary plus a special guide on the lost letters is coming up.

[GeneralHankerchief]

To make up for my lack of commentary for Mafia VII (I still have part of it done, somewhere...), I’ve written two for this round. One of them pertains to the “twist,” which as you know by now pertains to the “lost letters” and what they stood for. The first part of that is pretty much an essay on why I did it, the second, how to go by solving it. The other is in the usual mold.

On the Detective, why I removed it from the game, and the letters:
I’ve been noticing a trend in games recently. Usually, they start with the Detective investigating a high-profile target, generally Sasaki, in Round 1. The Detective reveals privately to Sasaki if he’s innocent and a pro-town group begins to form. If Sasaki’s guilty, the Detective reports his findings to the town and Sasaki does everything he can to discredit him. Hilarity ensues, but it usually ends up with two power roles gone.

Taking Sasaki out of the equation for the moment, I’ve seen more and more games where the Detective’s “investigate” list has been a who’s-who of Mafia vets and people that are generally considered “good” players. What these Detectives are doing is going off and doing work based on reputation, not thread behavior. Bad game tactics, IMHO.

Another thing that bothers me is the aspect of revealing privately. My games are well-known for barring any sort of private rule, but many do not have that in place. What usually happens is that all the power roles plus investigated innocents get together, become the “in crowd” for that game, and make a forum on Quicktopic to discuss things without fear of mafia corruption. In essence, they generally become a second mafia faction, an organized group that knows more than the rest of the people. This means there are three factions in any game where the host had designed there to only be two: The mafia, the elite town, and the normal townies who are doomed to die between the mafia’s killing spree and the elite town’s lynching efforts. Occasionally, when there’s ambiguity in Detective results (Stig’s Beer Salesman game) or out-and-out trickery (TinCow’s brilliant play in Netherworld) these groups can be infiltrated, but this is the exception rather than the norm. One might argue that it’s the next step for the good players, to be able to take out these groups from the inside, but a game of Mafia boiled down to its simplest definition is an informed minority trying to defeat an uninformed majority. Private reveals and what follows throw this out of whack.

This made me start thinking about the history of the Detective in my own game as well as its necessity. Take a ride, children, back to the prehistoric days of .Org Mafia, back before the Gameroom existed, to Mafia I.

The posts were few, and most of them were joking around, with absolutely no real detective (lowercase “d”) work being done. I think the players, to a man, had never played a game of internet mafia before. Kagemusha gets a lot of credit for being able to survive and deliver the game for the mafia, but really, it was only me throwing the odds significantly in the town’s favor for the final round (cryptic PMs to the innocents, a double execution, and letting the dead vote) that gave the town any resemblance of a chance in that game. I knew for Mafia II that something needed to be done, fairly, that helped the town a bit. Thus, the Detective was born.

In Mafia II, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Tiberius, the first ever .Org Detective, fingered a mafioso, Lemur, mid-game and revealed a few rounds later, providing a catastrophic blow to the mafia’s chances. The first signs of decent townie play emerged late in that game, with Sasaki’s false claim (his first of many :laugh4:) giving Tiberius room to operate, and Kommodus’s primitive vote-indexing system Watson fingering Lemur shortly before Tib revealed, but ultimately it was the Detective that doomed the mafia in that game. Mission accomplished.

The town started taking over as the main threat beginning in Mafia III, and consequently, the Detective’s importance and ineffectiveness dropped off. Crazed Rabbit lasted nine rounds and helped push town opinion towards lynching Kommodus in III, but in truth he was extremely unlucky and not the deciding factor (although to be fair, it wasn’t the town either, but more of a massive mafia choke – sorry to bring back bad memories, K). In IV, the game was over before Reenk Roink got a chance to do anything. Banquo’s Ghost was quickly lynched in V, Orb was killed something like Round 2 in VI, and sapi was killed mid-game in VII without any significant information to his name. Really, after Mafia II, the Detective was little more than a nominal threat to the mafia, just another townie with a little more at stake.

I think, looking back, I had meant to put the Detective in only temporarily as the town got stronger and more experience. Think of it as a crutch – when your leg is broken, you lean on it. But all the while, that leg is gaining strength and eventually, it heals. You don’t need to crutch anymore; as a matter of fact, continued reliance on it is bad for you. I think I lost that mentality somewhere in the tumult of Tiberius’s reveal and my “will it be this round?” speculation of Crazed Rabbit in Mafia III. I think it’s time, unless it’s a complicated game with a lot of ambiguity involved – say, Midgard II for example - that the Detective role be dropped. The town’s smart enough now, the only problem is that they can be lazy. Realizing that they need to take the initiative might remedy that. Looking back, I think the town would have been more active had I told them there wouldn’t be a Detective from the beginning.

So why didn’t I? Shock value, for one. Ideally, I would have liked the mystery to have been solved mid-to-end game, have the town realizing that they weren’t getting any deus ex machina help, and have them buckle down and do some serious work to make for another spectacular GH endgame. Secondly, I wasn’t sure how many players I was getting. If we didn’t get very many, I would have probably left the Detective in there. If we got some, I might have taken him out but told everyone. We got 38 players, however, a very good amount, so I decided to go forward with the clues.

I was thinking of a good way to do this when khaan and Curio sent me their N1 kill descriptions. Curio didn’t ask for much – just generally the running theme of a man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora and being cheerful (and later on, Cuban cigars). Khaan gave me total freedom. This was all I needed. Starting N2 I believe, I began subtly removing letters from kill and lynch descriptions, letters that would spell out “Sans investigateur,” or, roughly translated from French, “Without Detective.” This went unnoticed until the N3 writeup with TevashSzat’s epic death and my note telling everyone to find the lost letters.

(Random tangent: I originally translated “investigator” to “investigateur” due to dictionary.com’s online translator. About a round or two later, after I had already placed I, N, and V down, I translated it via the site’s French-English dictionary and got enquêteur, which was less obvious and would have worked better. Oh, well, at least I got the grammar of the initial note right.)
The general plan for this mystery was to lay down the initial clue in N3, have the town get on the track with the letters about a round later, and then have them figure out the message about midway through the overall game. They were quicker than I expected, so I had a lot of fun screwing around with their heads by alternating the amount of letters missing in the descriptions and having khaan’s mafioso continue to talk through his broken nose, lending some credibility to that argument, initially made by Ichigo. The way to figure out the true missing letters from the red herrings was spelled out in the two French notes provided to the town.

As noted over the course of the game, there were three different types of “errors” made in the writeups:

Words with missing letters in them
Words with extra letters
Words with letters switched around

Early on, people only concentrated on the missing letters, but later, the distinction between the three was blurred and people didn’t really work to separate the three. Unfortunately, they were right earlier on. The note said to specifically find the lost letters – i.e. those that were missing.

A second layer of complexity was added when I removed too many letters – more than necessary to spell out “Sans investigateur”. Examples of these were the IC in “sufficiency”, an I in “extraordinaire”, etc. The goal of this strategy was to keep the phrase a useless jumble of letters until I provided them the ideal decoder later in the game: the second French note.

This second note, supplied N7 after the death of Joe Monks, reads in English:

“Some letters will be found, but not all pieces fit into the puzzle.”

The translation may not have been perfect, as emphasized with Sasaki’s only somewhat successful Babelfish attempt. For this, I can only say that I’m not a native French speaker, haven’t formally studied it in over a year, and that I did the best I could. Sorry for the potential mess-ups.

The first part, “Some letters will be found” was the decoder. In that writeup I had made an effort to use every “lost letters” word in the past whose letters didn’t go into “Sans investigateur.” The letters were added back in and doubled (“sufficiciency”, extraordinaiire”, etc.), thus removing them from the phrase. The second part, “not all pieces fit into the puzzle”, was a reinforcement of the fact that the townies were only supposed to concentrate on the missing words. Finally in that writeup, I added the final letters to complete the phrase: U and R.

For some reason the .Org’s spell checker only caught one of them, and this wasn’t the first time, either. In the N3 writeup, I believe, an I was missing in the word “in”, leaving only the word “n”, which nobody caught over the course of the game. Don’t rely on one tool, people! So really, when the infamous S A N S N I V I C was being thrown around, it read S A N S I N V, with an I and an IC being removed and another I being placed earlier on in the phrase. And so on.

To my disappointment, nobody really made any progress at getting the riddle until Kommodus extremely late in the game. There were some efforts, but they kind of stalled while the would-be solvers waited until I provided them with the codebreaker. By that point, the endgame was in full swing and everybody was concentrated on getting the mafia via more conventional means. Probably beneficial from the town’s point of view, considering what the payout would have been had they solved it (“hey, it’s telling us there’s no Detective! Great, we were operating on the assumption he was dead anyway. What a waste.”) but it was kind of disappointing to me because I had wanted to see it solved. Oh well.

I think the reason that the riddle went unsolved was an issue of timing, really. It might have been better if there were even more players, say around fifty. Capo II had, IIRC, 15 or so night phases and around 80 players. Had I done the riddle in an environment like that, it would have run its course by the midgame, or in other words, the part of the game where the townies still had time before they had to buckle down and kill the mafia.

All in all, I’m glad I did it, because I think it adds a new dimension to these games. However, future hosts who may want to follow my lead are warned. Be careful, because it could distract the townies too much. Make sure it stays the sideshow, the support effort, and never the main focus. After all, I’m pretty sure khaan and Curio were appreciative of all the effort that was (ultimately) wasted on it – while they weren’t sweating it out that the message might name them, of course!

On the game:

Pre-game
Mafia: makaikhaan and Gaius Scribonius Curio

Mafia VIII took place in a period of relatively low activity in the Gameroom. It was immediately preceded by Myrddraal’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” a very good game but with very few players, and Caius’s “Everything Happens in the Wild West”, a game which never really got off the ground. At the time of this writing, the game after Mafia VIII, Omanes’s “The Brothel”, is hovering around 20 players after several days of being open. So I was grateful that I was still able to pull in 38 players. :yes:

This was also my first post-Capo II game, bringing in several starring players from that game and beyond, most notably TinCow, Curio, and Privateerkev. Naturally, the Gameroom mainstays like Sasaki Kojiro, Ichigo, and Andres showed up. I was disappointed to know that a lot of the chatters like Prole, Xiahou, and Husar, didn’t play, but on the other hand the people whom I consider to be the Big Three of the Mafia series – Crazed Rabbit, Kagemusha, and Kommodus – did. These three have been playing since the beginning (M2 for Kommodus) and always seem to a) stick around until the end, and b) have a major impact. In this game, only one of them really followed this criteria, but oh, what in impact it was in the endgame. I was grateful for their continued interest.

And then, of course, we come to the mafia. Random.org gave me khaan, an established player who has been an extremely tricky mafioso in the past with the multi-role environment. We would see how he would fare when the game was stripped down. Its second pick was Curio, a new player who was leading the townie effort in Taormina but got badly fooled by PK. Would he get his revenge? Time would tell.

Finally, as discussed above, there was no Detective, for the first time since Mafia I.

Round 1

Curio kills Tratorix
Khaan kills Omanes Alexandrapolites

Good first kills by the mafia. The only contribution either of the two made in the game was Tratorix being the first one to translate the French “lost letters” message after N3. I felt really sorry for Omanes though, as he has the worst luck in my games. He’s played in two of them, VI and VIII, and both times he hasn’t even made it through the first round. Ouch!

(of course, there might be a pattern to this, as both times he didn’t really do anything after his death. A word to the wise: Mafia, take note, and Omanes, you might want to take action and start becoming more of a threat if you want to live longer. Easier said than done, of course, so I’ll shut up and get back to the game.)

Anyway, the round started off with an extremely questionable move by Privateerkev, in that he voted for himself using the following reasoning:


No mafia member would be so crazy as to vote for himself.

Therefore I must either be innocent or doing the biggest WIFOM in history.

My thoughts, both then and now:

:inquisitive:

I’m still not quite sure what PK was trying to achieve by this. My guess is that he wanted to gain the town’s trust and contribute while not waiting for the mafia to off him, thinking that a self-organized lynching in Round 1 would do the trick. However, the problem is (which I think he’s learned) is that it’s simply not enough. The only way you are exonerated in this game is if the mafia kill you. That’s it. Yes, PK organized and pushed for his own lynching, but the doubt was still there, the lack of a 100% certainty.

Other highlights of this round include the voting being extended due to Tosa’s massive upgrade of the .Org, Sarathos voting eight times in a row, and Sasaki voting repeatedly (and purposely) for the dead Tratorix and later Omanes. As custom in the first round, the mafia sat silently back and laughed as PK directed his own death and Sasaki walked perilously close to the line of lynching. All in all, it was an active, if unproductive, round.

Executed: Privateerkev

Round 2

Curio kills Andres
Khaan kills Craterus

Both targets were chosen, IIRC, because of Detective speculation/odd behavior. For most of the game (at least, the portion where khaan was active) Curio would send in his kill first. He provided me with kills of various degrees of completeness. Some days were outlines that I worked with (e.g. “Andres is jogging by a lake, he sees a well-dressed man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora sitting on a park bench. The man is smiling and makes a comment about the beautiful weather. Andres joins in, and then the man says “Unfortunately, this is the last day you’ll enjoy it”) and shoots him. Some days were nothing, and some days were pretty full descriptions that only needed a bit of polishing up (near the endgame, usually). Khaan, afraid that somebody would catch his writing style, gave me total discretion.

This was the part of the game where I had a strange obsession with birds/ducks being a linking theme. Some speculation was made from it, but to tell you the truth I just wanted a recurring bit of comedy with Beirut being more worked up over birds causing him property damage than the mafia killing the villagers. After a few more rounds, I got tired of using birds to link the two kills and dropped it entirely.

Finally, there was a small reference to “trace amounts of osmium” in the duck pond, a little homage to Mafia IV. Honestly, I was surprised that more wasn’t made of it. :laugh4: Guess the old games are fading into obscurity.

Elite Ferret quickly got into trouble this round due to most of his posts being simply joking around. Khaan happily joined the easy bandwagon, but Curio stayed away and voted for a future lynch-bait in FactionHeir. With low activity this round, EF was easily lynched.

Executed: Elite Ferret

Round 3

Curio kills LittleGrizzly
Khaan kills TevashSzat

Ah, the third round night kills. :laugh4: So much was made of Tevash’s epic death, the “find the lost letters” note, and the broken nose. Now you guys know the truth. Tevash wasn’t Detective, but I just felt like writing a good car chase scene. Plus, it was a good way of introducing the word puzzle, which had begun to be implemented the previous round.

A few calling cards were introduced this round. Curio’s dress, manner of speaking, and khaan’s shotgun were already in place, but I added a Cuban cigar for Curio and the Mercedes/broken nose for khaan this round. I wanted to do more with the cigars for Curio’s character, but kept forgetting to put them in. :laugh4:

I will say in future games not to make too much of calling cards, as they can be easily manipulated by the mafia and myself to screw with the town. Clothes and weapons can be leant. Even names can be manipulated, like in Mafia VII (I finally get to talk about that! Woo!). In that game woad&fangs’s character was named Mr. Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace, or Mr. A.F.I.A. for short. Later on, Crazed Rabbit named his character Mr. A.F.I.A. as well. In the kills, however, I always put at least one reference to Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace in woad’s kill scenes, and never put it in CR’s. After woad’s lynchings, Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace was dropped and both kills were made by the ambiguous Mr. A.F.I.A. Things like that can be tricky, which is why calling cards can be so hard to decipher.

The rest of the round was pretty strange. There were the usual junk votes being thrown around, but then peverpink started claiming left and right, first mafia and then Detective, and then renouncing it. He named Kagemusha as a mafioso, putting pressure, temporarily, on the old survivor. It would not be the last time.

Another reason why I got rid of the Detective is for rules purposes. There is always the opportunity to break rules and reveal privately, something which I almost had to deal with in Mafia VII and had no desire of doing so again.

Anyway, people were fed up with pever’s goofing around and gave him the chop. End round 3, with the mafia sitting pretty.

Executed: peverpink

Round 4

Curio kills Crazed Rabbit
Khaan kills woad&fangs

Both mafiosi from Mafia VII bought it the same night. I liked it. :laugh4:

There’s been a lot said about how my games are an absolute grind for the mafia (and they are) and that Curio and khaan are to be congratulated for getting as far as they did, especially with khaan unable to provide support for a week (and they are) but I still think there was a handicap in this game, more than in the others. For starters, obviously, there was no Detective. More subtly, though, the letters. This was the point where people really started focusing on them as opposed to getting a lot of data. That was a distraction and helped the mafiosi out. Finally, the players. Kommodus was inactive this game, popping in this round to avoid the WoG and then dropping off the face of the earth (and eventually getting mod-killed) until the final round. Sasaki never really made an impact. And Kage first went on a cruise and then went to his annual rock festival. So the town was definitely at a greater disadvantage in this game.

Their mindset didn’t help things either. In the transition from the goofy beginning game to the serious midgame, the town pretty much decided on a pecking order and stuck with it until the desperate endgame. #s 1 and 2 on this list were TinCow and FactionHeir, with Seamus Fermanagh, Sasaki, and even khaan farther down.

Honestly, I don’t know why TC was suspicious. References to posts were made, but really, I think it was the power of the bandwagon more than anything that doomed him. He went down, but only after a tie vote (after 2/3 of FactionHeir’s votes came from our mafiosi) extended his life a little bit. I hope I gave the .Org’s resident lawyer (quiet, Andres, I knew TC first :tongue:) a fitting send-off.

Executed: TinCow

Round 5

Curio kills Rythmic
Khaan kills Quintus.J.Cicero

For this round, I had total freedom on both kills. That hasn’t happened since, like, Mafia I. Cicero bought it via red imported fire ants (inspired by the recent Indiana Jones movie) right after he had narrowly escaped the WoG last round by voting.

Khaan started the round off by going after Sasaki with the most links I’ve ever seen in one post, including OverKnight’s “History of KotR” thread:


Vote: Sasaki

There is little good reason for your decrease in posting. You're count is way down, and many of your votes have been unhelpful, often unhelpful with either little or no reasoning.

Examples like this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937615&postcount=116), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937767&postcount=134), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937874&postcount=153), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937903&postcount=159), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1941642&postcount=362). Of note for this one is that he doesn't ever actually do as he said and clarify or discuss the vote or issues.
Here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1942298&postcount=461), Sasaki repeats his FoS of TinCow, but again does not offer any reasoning or clarification for it.Here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1943372&postcount=519) he once again does a FoS of TinCow but doesn't offer reasoning. Here he states he even can't recall any actual specific post that actually struck him as suspicious. (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1944298&postcount=572)Also this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1944514&postcount=587)



Non-contributory posts like this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937908&postcount=161), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937920&postcount=164), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937945&postcount=172), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937962&postcount=174), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937983&postcount=178), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1942513&postcount=497), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1944534&postcount=591), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1945033&postcount=637), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1946481&postcount=709), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1946494&postcount=711)


Serious posts:
This (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1937994&postcount=180), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1938008&postcount=183), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1938328&postcount=209), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1942077&postcount=419), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1942509&postcount=494), this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1944098&postcount=566), where he finally offers the faintest of a glimpse of his reasoning and his activity, but frankly, to me, this isn't all that acceptable. Hell, my state's flooded and I can find time to do this post.
This (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1945297&postcount=648), and this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1945391&postcount=650), where he only finally offers some kind of serious reason for all of his previous votes and "FoS'".Here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1946021&postcount=683) he offers a further vote for TinCow for the tie.This (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1946507&postcount=714) and this (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1946788&postcount=718) regarding letters.



Basically, Sasaki's been active enough to avoid major suspicion, but has most often been unhelpful in his votes and commentary. His activity isn't particularly explainable, and his behavior, for someone who is so experienced at mafia, is unacceptable, and has done almost no good for the town thus far; there were still two different killers for the night phase; the drummer and the man with the broken nose. This would rather indicate to me that TinCow was innocent. Sasaki's efforts to help the town have thus far been mostly subpar; I think its attributable to being guilty.

At the time I was concerned for khaan’s real-life welfare because this was when Iowa (his home state) was flooded, but apparently he was fine and smelling blood. The mafia were obviously gunning for Sasaki this round, his reputation obviously being scarier than his actual contributions to the game. Sasaki responded with a pretty decent, although short, defense:


There are far too many links in that post.

Some games I lead the charge some I don't. Think I got lynched as a townie in mafia VI (?) for posting less. It happens.

By the way makaikhaan, you should know that the "different killers" in the writeup doesn't indicate squat. Any one of the lynchees could have been mafia, the writeups wouldn't have been changed.

However, the attack was on. Curio, secondarily, led an effort to take down Kommodus, who was well on his way to the Land of WoG by that point. Clearly, the mafia wanted to take down a high-profile target this round. It worked, with Sasaki and Kommodus tying for the most votes in an inactive round.

One interesting note was what came out of the inactivity: Suspicion fell on the active people, with the logic being that the people who voted would also get their kills in on time. While incorrect (see what happened when khaan went AWOL), this logic would name khaan and Curio, among others, as major suspects. Later, when khaan dropped off the radar, Curio kept his activity up, which among other things might have ruined him.

For now, however, Sasaki was lynched, allowing the mafia to breathe easier. 5 rounds down, no problem. Of course, it was like that for many other ill-fated mafia teams...

Executed: Sasaki Kojiro

Round 6

Khaan kills shlin28
Curio kills RoadKill

Khaan sent in his kill early (around the start of the tiebreak vote), said he’d be having internet problems that night, and then dropped off the face of the earth for a week, leaving Curio with all the work. Curio, meanwhile, wanted to not kill anybody to throw the whole “if you vote a lot, you send in your kills on time” logic out of whack. After some deliberation, I decided not to allow it, and thus RoadKill went down. I think this ruling combined with what I allowed Curio to do in khaan’s absence pretty much cements the infallibility of the “there will always be two kills” rule.

The next couple of rounds that followed saw witness to probably the most herculean feat ever accomplished in one of my games: Curio’s solo effort (just beating out Crazed Rabbit’s prolonged survival in Mafia VII after he did an amazing manipulation of The Truth). He had no backup, no wingman, nobody to help advise him.

His first day alone went well, with Seamus Fermanagh getting most of the town’s attention. Seamus had spent most of his time trying to refine his play style in order to defeat Holmes for future games and, in his well-known analyses, several times forgot to include every person. Naturally, this got the town’s suspicion up, and Seamus was left scrambling.

IIRC, I think there were also some similarities to a kill in Mafia V (when Seamus was a mafioso), which further injured Seamus’s cause. Let me just say that, when you’ve done eight of these things, you have a tendency to repeat some kills! :laugh4: I remember looking back and rereading Mafia VII, I had made references to the “Ten Little Indians” poem as I had done this time, but not as blatant. There are probably more, too, and will be as this series continues. By then, it will be up to the town to determine whether these similarities are intentional or just coincidence (more likely :tongue:).

Beefy187 had a very nice analysis going in this round and ended up voting for khaan, but a quick post by PK made him change and he ended up voting for Seamus. Come on, Beefy, trust that initial instinct! :yes:

The bandwagon was initially on when discovery1 showed up, and, following the smiley, voted for Seamus. Interestingly enough, Curio started another side-bandwagon on Sarathos, which didn’t gain enough steam. This failed effort would have repercussions in the endgame, but for now, another “heavy hitter” was gone.

Executed: Seamus Fermanagh

Round 7

Curio kills CountArach
Khaan “kills” Joe Monks

I think this was the first time where the calling cards got tangled up, intentionally by Curio to throw the town out of whack. I exercised discipline and allowed a Marxist discussion to take place without any disparaging remarks (Capitalism FTW!!! :2thumbsup:) between the two Backroom Aussie lefties. Interestingly enough, Curio PM’d me later to compliment me on CA’s death saying it’s what he would have done. I wondered if, because of it, suspicion would have fallen on Curio, but none ever did.

Funnily enough, it was this round where I purposely imitated another Mafia V kill (it was where Reenk Roink killed Kommodus, I think, and twisted a famous quote to serve his needs), but nobody said anything. This was also the kill description with the second French note, signifying the end of the letters.

Due to the change in kills, some people believed that it signified Seamus’s guilt. Curio asserted himself and, interestingly, provided the correct explanation for the kills (I think if people like Sasaki had been paying more attention, they would have blasted him for this. I was certainly chuckling at the monitor when I saw his posts like that. :laugh4:). Taking initiative, he cast the first vote for a longtime target in FactionHeir. FH, for the most part, had spent his time abstaining and overanalyzing the letters. The bandwagon, however, was on, with the only real distraction this round being my banning Elite Ferret from Mafia IX out of sheer annoyance. You guys don’t know how much I hate that clown smiley. :smg:

Executed: FactionHeir

Round 8

Curio kills Beefy187
Khaan “kills” Sigurd Fafnesbane

Round 8. The endgame was upon us. The traditional round where the mafia, cruising along, hit the speed bump (with Round 9 being when they lose control of the car and slam into an oak tree at 60 mph). Would Curio, essentially operating alone, follow Crazed Rabbit’s pattern and make it? Or, like so many others, would he falter and ultimately be overcome by the awesome power that is the town?

Early in the night phase, Curio made his preparations and strongly went after Kagemusha and discovery1, both of whom took offense and started looking at Curio more closely. Curio, meanwhile, backed his accusation up in the kills when he made it absolutely clear (by now, he was beginning to write more) that there were two mafiosi left. Knowing my history, I personally thought Curio was a liiiiittle bit overconfident/cocky, but watched to see it play out.

Curio, of course, explained the kills perfectly and once again nobody really got on him for it. Interesting, really, that the one person who takes anything from the kill posts that doesn’t get suspected is the real mafioso! :laugh4: He and Kage started going after each other like two boxers, with most of the dead (barring TinCow, who suspected Curio for activity) backing Curio.

At the close of the phase, Kage got a temporary respite and voting shifted from him to KukriKhan, who for most of the game had been a helpful, if off-target townie. With four minutes to go in voting, Kukri, partially in an effort to save himself and partially convinced by reasoning, switched his vote from Kage to Curio, sealing the death of one mafioso. Once again, lightning had struck. The mafia had been dealt a blow and now the game, with khaan still absent, seemed to be in fate’s hands.

Executed: Gaius Scribonius Curio

Round 9

Khaan “kills” KukriKhan and Ichigo

My PM to Curio at the start of the night phase:


This next day phase is going to be an absolute farce. What it's going to come down to is whether or not khaan shows up and votes. I don't think a game has even ended by WoG before. :laugh4:

The bad news: Unfortunately, you are lynched and now pretty much have to rely on fate that khaan will show up to save the day. You also have to send in both of his kills and they will both be made by a man with a broken nose. I suggest that you mask that somehow.

The good news: Finally, precedence falls in your favor! As I have done in the past, I will extend the next day phase to 48 hours, so khaan will have more time to show up.

No matter how things turn out, you've essentially operated without a wingman for the second half of the game and survived this long, an enormous feat you should be proud of. Congratulations on that... and cross your fingers.

GH

Yes, khaan would have been Wogged had he not shown up. Sarathos too, leaving the possibility that the game might have ended with Disco as the only survivor! :laugh4: I can’t imagine how I would have written that one.

Curio chose Kukri and Ichigo partially because he wanted a bunch of lurkers left in the game and because he didn’t think khaan would be back (at the time, I didn’t know he had been on vacation and that his absence had something to do with the flooding) in time, so he wanted to get his revenge on Kukri. In retrospect, this was a big mistake. At the time, however, there was no way of knowing. I’ll discuss this more in my “game end” section.

Anyway, I posted the kills in the summary thread at 22:16, my time. At 22:19, I received the following PM:


GH, I'm terribly sorry about my disappearance. I was offered a last second opportunity to go on vacation with a buddy of mine in the northeast. I expected to have internet available, but to my surprise, I had none. I have had no access for the last week or so. I'll get back in the thread soon.j

Tonight, I'll kill Disco and Sarathos.

Khaan was back, he was ready, and most notably, he gave me radically different kills. He missed the deadline by three minutes! Had he PM’d me before I put the kills up, I would have given his kills priority.

I’ll always wonder how much difference those three minutes made. Had he killed Disco and Sarathos, it would have left khaan, Ichigo, Kage (target #1), and Kukri (also pretty suspicious). Instead, he was stuck with Kage, Disco, and Sarathos, with him as one of the two major suspects. He was coming home from a vacation. Three minutes... that’s one rest stop. One bathroom break. A couple of traffic lights. One “Wait, don’t start the car yet, I forgot to pack this!” It made all the difference in the world.

At least khaan had avoided the WoG, however. Now all he needed to worry about was keeping Disco and Sarathos focused on Kage, who by this point was defending himself like crazy.

Over the past two rounds, I was imagining potential crazy endgame scenarios, grinning wildly at the thought of them and the fact that they were, in fact, plausible. Kage could be lynched but khaan fails to show up, getting Wogged. Khaan shows up in the 11th hour and puts the clinching vote on Kage, thus getting his revenge and forever destroying the Curse. Kage gets lynched Round 8, with Curio getting the lynch Round 9 and khaan getting the WoG, thus marking the first time two mafiosi ever died in one day phase and pretty much affirming the Curse for all eternity (how else do you explain two mafiosi dying right after the guy gets lynched?). But I was never imagining what really happened.

As expected, khaan reacquainted himself with the game and went after Kagemusha, who proceeded to give himself probably the greatest defense in the history of mafia games. With khaan gunning for him and just about every single dead person screaming for his blood, Kage hammered three points over and over:

As a mafioso, he would have a partner, and there was absolutely no clear-cut partner.
khaan, on the other hand, had a clear connection to the lynched TinCow (wrong partner, right idea).
If he were a mafioso, why would he make himself the only clear-cut lynch choice?

The third point was probably the most effective, WIFOM or not, which is why my confidence in WIFOM has all but evaporated. Some things are just common sense. It’s the final round, there are a bunch of lurkers alive... and you kill off the second-most suspicious guy (Kukri) and isolate yourself? When you can just tell everybody else to vote for the other suspicious guy instead? Please. There definitely needs to be a line drawn between WIFOM and common sense.

Amazingly, Kage convinced the two people that mattered. First Sarathos, then Disco, believed him and cast their votes for khaan. I closed the final phase, shaking my head in amazement. I’m sure the mafia were doing the same. Khaan was lynched with a ton of the dead screaming that Kage had played them all.

Executed: makaikhaan

Game end

Earlier on, khaan PM’d me saying, assuming Kage was the lynch, that Sarathos was to be killed in a 24-hour diner and Disco was to be run over by a bandwagon. A little hasty there, khaan? :laugh4: Lacking inspiration for the final scene, I decided to go with the diner approach but (obviously) change the result.

Curio definitely established himself as a very good player in this game with his commendable effort. He had to carry the weight for part of the midgame and most of the endgame and almost made it. There were a lot of moments he shined, in messing with the calling cards and his lynch choices, but there's a bit that needs to be polished up, especially in reaction to the kill posts. From my (obviously biased and informed) standpoint, those were the obvious parts that screamed "MAFIOSO!!!" to me. Look for him to become a very formidable player in the future. khaan, of course, turned in another exemplary effort and it was only due to Kage's amazing defense that he failed.

With yet another mafia collapse in the final two rounds, it’s time to reflect on what caused it this time. As my “console the losers” commercial noted, previous defeats have been caused by surprise reveals, chokes, turnarounds in town strategy, and Holmes. However, none of these really applied here. For a little while it seemed like process of elimination would destroy khaan and Curio, with both of them on the “watch” list, but both, khaan especially, fell off for a while. Curio got lynched, yes, but that was more due to luck than anything. I think the game was really lost when Curio made the decision to kill KukriKhan and Ichigo, most notably Kukri.

Things brings me to the lesson learned from Mafia VIII: Play to win, not to cover your butt. Both sides were guilty of this, I think. In Curio’s final kills, he had pretty much given up hope that khaan was coming back and acted as such, getting revenge on Kukri and putting khaan in a very bad position when he eventually did reappear. Had he operated under the hope that Kage was coming back, I think he would have killed Disco and Sarathos, leaving khaan in a better position. Heck, there might have even been a tie between Kage and Kukri in the final round, forcing me to further extend the round, giving khaan even more time to get back. The town, for too much of the game, was simply lynching people because they were on the “next to go” list – the sign of a lazy town. Case in point TinCow and FactionHeir, who really didn’t do anything to warrant suspicion in the later rounds and were lynched just because. This is the same reason why many of the dead people were gunning for Kage in the final round. They wanted him gone just because if he had stayed alive, it would have been a travesty and he would have skunked them all. They were so focused on making sure they didn’t badly lose (if they had lost to khaan, I don’t think it would have been a bad loss for them so much as a “good win” for him) that they didn’t analyze everything. In the endgame, you can’t afford to have narrow vision.

Now that Mafia VIII is over, it makes me wonder where it will rank among my other games. III, V, and VI, are the giants, of course, and VIII is most similar to them. VII had the most posts, but I didn’t like hosting that as much. I had to do too much enforcement/peacekeeper work in that one and the final rounds were pretty much a farce after Crazed Rabbit pulled “The Truth.” IV was promising, but far too short. I was special, but that’s all it’ll be, really. And II was a pretty mediocre game until Tiberius’s reveal saved that one. So where to put VIII, I don’t know. I’d like to lump it in with the great ones, but there’s still a lot of inactivity. I think we’ll have to reserve judgment until some time has passed and how fondly I look back on this game.

That said, I’d like to congratulate everyone that participated, with special kudos to our gallant mafiosi Gaius Scribonius Curio and makaikhaan, and of course Kagemusha, the man that credit for this town victory goes to! :cheerleader: Congrats guys, and see you in Mafia IX! :rifle: