"mafia" and "scum" are used interchangeably.
have i slipped into some sort of parallel universe where all the mafia words mean slightly different things
do you guys also do that thing they do on earth prime where some of them change their timezones twice a year-
also, I am heartily sick of this conversation that I only even engaged with to see if skytini actually knew the town wincon or was just bluffing, but I can't let this juicy bit go unsaid:
tbf, we mentioned the town wincon first and e was merely reacting to it with skepticism; not like e went out on a limb to mention it unprompted or anything. we had a very similar conversation in ooctvtq, wherein e actually was mafia. i don’t remember exactly how it went but it’d probably be a good thing to look back at.
I didn't remember this exchange - which is not surprising, since "scum" being used as "anti-town" is not a New Thing and probably wouldn't have registered as a notable event to me - so I went and searched for it and
look who also understood that to be a possible meaning at the time. I rest my case. Now can we please focus on something other than semantics? :P
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In some ways this post has been superseded by more recent events, but I've been trying to write it for two hours and I'm damn well not going to let it get lost in the kerfuffle -
Okay, I have some thoughts on what happened last Night, some likely and unlikely scenarios of what went down. First is that both kills were made by the Mafia. I find this unlikely, unless there's some restriction shenanigans like only being able to kill every other night but they have two kills. Next up is either 1 Mafia 1 Vig or 1 Mafia 1 Serial Killer. This one is strange to figure out, since we already had Zori claim vig, but they were 3p. Does that make her an SK equivalent? Is there a town-aligned vig? I can buy an SK attack, since I'm aware of several 3p killing roles with time-restricted kills. However, I have a third scenario, where Herbe himself was not actually targeted for death. Now, Zori claimed to have a drawback passive, and I'd bet that Herbe did too. Y'see, Neigborizers, Masons, and Cultists—and there's no way to know which Herbe actually was—all tend to have the downside of dying when they try to recruit Mafia members. For reasons I'll likely get into tomorrow, I think this is what killed Herbe, and then Hydrei prob just took the scumkill.
This theory (that Hydrei was the nightkill) is kind of interesting. I'd previously been assuming Herbe had been killed by the mafia, perhaps because they'd tried to hit him N0 and thought he was an alien. But this post by ZM reminded me of something I'd noticed in Hydreigon's posts yesterday. Take a look at these:
Town shouldn't waste any actions on me for reasons i can't currently say why, due to it being early. However it will help town
i meant it could help Town i prefer not to reveal it yet though
I'd much rather prefer to Abstain than to Mis-Yeet someone that could be town
if you're town however, i am providing hints for town
At the time, these pinged to me like an inexperienced cop dropping softs - I assumed he had checked Zori N0, got a result of "not mafia" or similar, and was inexpertly trying to guide the town away from yeeting her. I didn't say anything at the time because You Don't Out The Cop, and then I discarded the idea altogether after the combination of Zori's flip and Jack's paralysis, but I can certainly imagine the mafia noticing the same thing and deciding to off him out of an abundance of caution, especially if they don't have any inforoles that would give them other leads.
Negrek's claim kind of throws the spanner in the works here, a bit. It's true that if town!she vigged Herbe, that would leave the mafia nightkill open to hit Hydreigon. I think I do believe she killed Herbe because she thought he was an alien, for all the reasons other people have already outlined - e.g. her reluctance to yeet him - but that's not at all indicative of her alignment.
I guess the question we'd need to ask to differentiate the two possibilities is... in the world where Negrek is mafia, Hydrei was probably vigged, so is there a reason why the vig would have gone after him? It would have to be because of his tone, right? That would also imply the hypothetical vig didn't pay attention to the posts I quoted above, or didn't interpret them as possible cop softs. So I'd be interested in getting a quick straw poll of who did or didn't interpret them that way, to see whether it's something that a vig really ought to have noticed, or just my overactive pareidolia.
(Someone suggested earlier, as another possible solution, that this might be multiball, but I don't think that's likely - assume 2-3 players per mafia, plus at least two third parties, and that gives you no more than 10-12 town, or 55-67%. That's a shade scumsided, don't you think?)