Tol-in-Gaurhoth XX: Wereorc I: The elves cannot hide themselves much longer.

[Farael]

Middle-Erthian lore usually recognises rather few elven domains. Rivendel, Lothlorien, Mirkwood are perhaps better known because of the war of the ring. What no other scholar but myself knows, is the sad story of a small elven village that went by the name of “Pueblo”. For some extremely strange reason, the villagers of this town happened to speak a variation of Quenya that resembled Spanish very closely. They also wore Sombreros. Nice sombreros too, it is sad that the art of making elvish sombreros has been lost along with the history and lives of some of the residents of this town.

But I ramble, what I was trying to get across is that there was this little nice village in which everything was ok

[Flashback to Diamond 18 walking down a well cared for lawn]
Diamond: Everything is perfectly fine, nothing could possibly go wrong!!
[/endFlashback]

Yet of course, and as it always happens on the movies, things went wrong anyway. It was a dark night, Winter had recently gone away to make place for Spring, which had chosen to take vacations and left a void that was promptly filled by Summer. Sadly, Summer had spend his off-season eating too much and was nowhere close to game shape so for all intents and purposes, it was a dark Winter night. Even if it was not time for Winter.

What was I saying? Oh, I should have taken that green pill… what was it for? Which colour was the memory pill? Oh, yes… the story.

Small animals tended to disappear from time to time on this village, always at night. The last victim had been Nogrod’s little dog, a very friendly if slightly rabid dog. Somehow, the cage in which he was kept to prevent other animals getting the disease had been torn open yet the dog was never found.

This night, something would happen that would comparatively diminish the animal disappearances to a mildly annoying joke. Farael disappeared.

Who was Farael? The scrolls are rather inconclusive. As far as I can understand, he was either a psychomaniac sheep with horns as long as a man’s forearm and a really foul temper… or he was the town’s Alchemist. I’m still working on that.

His disappearance was discovered by Dancing Spawn of Ungoliant when she went to his laboratory to remind him that she had written him a letter which he had not yet answered. She walked into the lab and found everything in complete order. The chemicals were organized alphabetically, the instruments were clean and stored in the proper places and the books were ordered by author in their respective shelves. Spawn ran away crying.

She was crying so hard she did not see Sleepy Ranger who decided to set his “apple-barrel” self right in the middle of the street. She tripped and went flying over the edge of a conveniently placed endless pit. Suddenly, a shining figure dressed in a white robe appeared, carefully bringing Spawn off the hole and deposited safely on the town’s square, where the other villagers had gathered to see what all the noise was.

Nilp, what the heck are you doing here? This is MY game, not yours!... oh, alright fine.. I won’t kill Spawn just yet, but if she gets lynched or killed by the wereorcs you have to promise not to interfere….

*ahem* yes, so I was saying, the village was gathered and Spawn explained what she had seen. Legolas in Spandex questioned the woman’s sanity, as he saw nothing wrong with Farael’s lab being clean. JennyHallu took Legolas aside for a moment and explained him that Farael never cleans or puts things in their proper order, therefore someone must have attacked him during the night and decided to clean to erase the evidence.

Glirdan volunteered to start looking for Farael and was joined by Findëasëa and Kitanna. After a moment of deliberation, they walked to Farael’s laboratory and found it, just like Spawn had said, in complete order. Yet there was something she had not noticed. On one corner, there was a huge jar of Hydrochloric Acid. That isn’t really important for the story’s sake, but I figured I’d let you know about it. What did matter is that on the other corner there was something, covered by a blanket and a sign that said “Do not touch. Signed: Fareal”.

Obviously, Farael would not misspell his own name, so Glirdan decided to investigate. You are probably expecting to read that it was Farael’s body what was under the blanket, and I will not let you down this time. The poor elf had his body dyed of many different colours and a bewildered look on his face. Findëasëa grabbed a book that was titled “chemical compounds of Middle Earth and their colours” only to find that Farael had effectively been stained with every compound known. This had clearly killed him, but why wasn’t he wearing his labcoat? A quick inspection of the site brought up the answer.

The coat was stashed on a drawer and written all over. Most of the writings were gone, but what Kitanna managed to read said the following:

Sounds of chemicals boiling in the room…
They are outside, I cannot get out
I have locked the doors, shut the windows but I fear I will not be able to hold them back

“WEREWOLVES?! WHO WAS IT, FARAEL?!” Yelled Glirdan, but the writing on the labcoat went on

… be patient, I’m trying to set a mood here…
Here they come again, there are three of them.
The chemicals are boiling, I cannot get out…
Three wereorcs are after me,
From their clothes I know that they are…

Glirdan waited patiently, but this time it was the end of the writing.

Farael was killed by three wereorcs and the village was thrown into mayhem and confusion. In their elven wisdom, they determined that what they needed to do was to argue during the day in order to decide of one, and only one, elf to Lynch, in hopes it will be one of the wretched creatures. Furthermore, they decided that, to avoid confusion and add stress, once an elf had voted, he would not be able to change his vote.

Two villagers nodded silently, while thinking to themselves. One of them was going to be in charge of looking after his fellow villagers. The other was in charge of discovering the identity of the wereorcs, even if the information would not go to him/herself at night.

And so, the village started arguing their way for the first day’s lynching.

Now living:
Caranlondien: aspiring harpist
JennyHallu: Doomsday prophet
Nogrod: unemployed barber.
Grendelien: village whittler
Findëasëa: paleoelfropologist
Celuien:lampwright
Zali: stringer-of-bows
Diamond: Inept Jewel Smith
Dancing Spawn...: a merchant
Glirdan:Very confused wereWOLF hunter (confused as he's faced with wereorcs rather than werewolves)
Kitanna:(still playing? If so thou shall be...) The town's gate-keeper
Naria:The grower of magnificent flowers
Sleepy A barrel of apples*
Legolas in spandex:For now he shall be Legolass (A movie-Legolast impersonator) unless he gives me another role
Roa_Aoife aspiring ballad writer

3 Wereorcs, 1 Ranger and 1 Shaman are still alive..

The wereorcs may PM only during the night cycle. They have to plot and decide whom to kill every night during the day, they act as any other villager.

The ranger will PM me every night the name of a villager. This villager will not be killed if the wereorcs choose him. The ranger may not choose the same villager two nights in a row

The shaman will PM me the name of one villager every night. The role of this villager will be disclosed in a dream right before the start of the following day. The dream will go to the Shaman for sure on day 1, then it will be decided completely at random. It may go to the Shaman, it may go to a wereorc, it may go to an innocent villager.

The rest of the rules are standard Werewolf. PM me if there are any doubts and… post away, my friends.

EDIT: Just a little friendly reminder... you MIGHT want to keep yourself as "invisible" during the game. It will avoid people being able to see what you are doing and thus derive information from it. To change your status to "invisible" you have to go to the User CP and toy around there, I'm not sure where it is. Do remember to save changes once you are done.

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention, I started the day early because I have a Pesach (Passover) diner tonight and I won't be around much longer.

[Nogrod]

Well, Farael the many-coloured! And as I thought that the loss of my dog was the worst thing to happen...

I'll just have to sleep over this.

But just a question for everyone to think about during the day and the oncoming night: we will not have to decide about this today, but tomorrow we will have to.

How do we make the best use of these shaman-dreams, going to random people? My basic instinct would say, we just come forwards with them, one by one, as we have them. The orcs possibly won't get very far with lying about them (one "found out" -lie - when the dream goes to an orc that tries to save a fellow - would get another orc lynched immediately?) - and the chance of them having a dream is about 1/4.

In the end, I think, it comes down to the question, how much do we believe, that the stars are not against us (with bad luck, we will have just distorted dreams), and how boldly we villagers want to play? We might have good chances with this way of dreaming, even better than in a normal "seer-game" - as the revelation burden can be shared: the revelation not revealing the shaman her/himself?

I admit these thoughts are not thought to the end, but maybe - tomorrow - we all have some balanced ideas about the subject, and can devise the best plan to get rid of this pestilence that has fallen upon our village.

[Kitanna]

I become free of the wicked english essay beast only to find trouble waiting for me in the least likely of places.
Well down to business I suppose.

Originally Posted by Nogrod

How do we make the best use of these shaman-dreams, going to random people? My basic instinct would say, we just come forwards with them, one by one, as we have them. The orcs possibly won't get very far with lying about them (one "found out" -lie - when the dream goes to an orc that tries to save a fellow - would get another orc lynched immediately?) - and the chance of them having a dream is about 1/4.

I'm not so sure about coming forward right away. I can't really say why, but I just have a feeling we should wait and see before acting, unless an innocent is in true danger of being lynched.
Celiun has stated part of what I think on the subject:

Not a bad plan, except for one thing. If we reveal dreams as we have them, then the Orcs can pick off any known innocents, one-by-one, rendering the dreams useless.

There's something else that bothers me about coming right out aside from that though. Anyone in the villager is able to have the dream, even the wereorcs. I feel if we reveal the dreams as they come and a wereorc has one he/she can manage to bend it to their will, without having to lie. I can't quite explain what I'm getting at, so I'll stop before I ramble myself into a hole.
Also with that plan the shaman is just as likely to get the dream as anyone. So if we reveal the dreams every day if the shaman actually gets one and reveals it we're out on the dreams.
It's probable a villager will only get one dream (if that) the entire game. If one comes forward with a dream of the orc and is innocent and the orcs spare him/her that night the villager may think he/she is an orc and lynch an innocent villager. This is just a terrible downfall to the shaman dreams altogther. [/ramble]

[Celuien]

Oh dear, poor Farael. I shall miss him. I enjoyed mixing hydrochloric acid with zinc over an open fire in his lab. 'Twas quite noisy, but the lights were brilliantly bright.

Originally Posted by Nogrod, post #2

How do we make the best use of these shaman-dreams, going to random people? My basic instinct would say, we just come forwards with them, one by one, as we have them. The orcs possibly won't get very far with lying about them (one "found out" -lie - when the dream goes to an orc that tries to save a fellow - would get another orc lynched immediately?) - and the chance of them having a dream is about 1/4.

Not a bad plan, except for one thing. If we reveal dreams as we have them, then the Orcs can pick off any known innocents, one-by-one, rendering the dreams useless. What the village needs to do is hold back the identities of innocents until we have enough names collected to make the revealations worth while.

Actually, though, it might not be a bad idea for each of us to find some way of leaving obscure hints so that if someone receives a dream and dies before being able to reveal it, there's still some way of picking up on what was known.

And I sort of have to go pretty soon, though I'll try to come back in several hours...

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Celuien

Not a bad plan, except for one thing. If we reveal dreams as we have them, then the Orcs can pick off any known innocents, one-by-one, rendering the dreams useless.

Well that was just the thing I thought about: and this way we win... because they are made to react, rather than act. We will then be always one dream ahead - and at some place, the wolves will be dreamed of too!

Actually, though, it might not be a bad idea for each of us to find some way of leaving obscure hints so that if someone receives a dream and dies before being able to reveal it, there's still some way of picking up on what was known.

I think this is a good working plan too. It is just a bit vague: we won't be able to trust, that the talk of some innocent dead was a hint or just a hunch, if they are obscure enough...

But we will have to think about these both: this day, and the next night.

PS. I do not mean we should use all our day's discussions on these matters - maybe we just all think about these ourselves, maybe commenting on the worst flaws in mine or Celuien's ideas - maybe introducing good new ideas too? Then we could open a real discussion tomorrow?

[Celuien]

*back for a few minutes*

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Well that was just the thing I thought about: and this way we win... because they are made to react, rather than act. We will then be always one dream ahead - and at some place, the wolves will be dreamed of too!

Right, but only one dream ahead, making it a hard to amass enough of a proven innocents to unknowns ratio to guide voting effectively.

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I think this is a good working plan too. It is just a bit vague: we won't be able to trust, that the talk of some innocent dead was a hint or just a hunch, if they are obscure enough...

Delibrately vague, for now anyway. The Orcsies are watching too, after all...

*goes away again*

[Caranlondien]

Alas and alack! Our poor dear alchemist, dead! My harp shall do naught but weep for Farael until his death has been avenged.

Now, as to killing these nasty orcs... I think Celuien makes a good point about the proposal of having the dreamers come forward immediately with those they dreamed about:

Originally Posted by Celuien

Right, but only one dream ahead, making it a hard to amass enough of a proven innocents to unknowns ratio to guide voting effectively.

I think discretion is in order, and it's a bad idea to make generalizations about how we should act - makes it easier for the wereorcs if we tell them our intentions.

[Roa_Aoife]

Originally Posted by Caranlondien

I think discretion is in order, and it's a bad idea to make generalizations about how we should act - makes it easier for the wereorcs if we tell them our intentions.

Caran (may I call you that?) makes a good point. I think in the end it will be up to whoever has the dream. Afterall, it's their potential sacrifice.

We ought to move on and discuss strategies for Day 1. Now I know everyone hates Day 1, nothing to go on, random babbling, etc, etc, etc, but Therianthropes have been caught on Day 1 and we have the ability to do so again. I personally don't like random voting- I like to vote for whoever is the most suspicious to me on any given day, no matter how marginal that suspicion is. If, however, you get to the end of today and are completely lost, by all means vote randomly. It's better to make a random vote than not vote at all. You may even get lucky. It's happened before.

Basically, let's get some discussion going so we can avoid the need for random votes.

[Roa_Aoife]

Horrid, filthy things, those orcs. Abominations to Elf and Eru. Poor Farael, having to deal with them. I wish he could have written more on that coat.

This dreaming is interesting. It protects the shaman by making it less necessary to come forward, and helps the village begin to act as a team. (One thing the wolves/orcs/cats/ducks/whatever have always had over the villagers.) It gives us a distinct advantage in that if a villager dreams of a wereorc they can come forward and sacrifice themselves, with out us losing the source of the dreams. Interesting, indeed.

The down side is that it can be misleading. We'll know who the shaman is after they die, but we can't necessarily look at their posts to see what they knew. We won't know which villagers dreamed or not when they die unless they tell us before they die, which they may not have the chance to do if they are killed in the night. The whole thing could turn against us rather quickly.

EDIT: Cross-posted with Nogrod

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

The down side is that it can be misleading. We'll know who the shaman is after they die, but we can't necessarily look at their posts to see what they knew.

That's a good point! I hadn't thought of that yet.

Looks intersting, anyhow.
(And now finally to sleep: I'll be back after some rest)

[Diamond18]

Eepers jeepers, these are meticulous orcs. Farael, dyed to death! *grabs various tools and thingies used in jewel smithing and assumes a defensive stance* I fear for my life. I fear for my cat's life. I fear for the life of my precious jewels. Nasty, thieving orcs will no doubt covet my latest experiment; light absorbing silmarils! Yes! You simply put them out on your windowsill on a sunny day and bring them in at night, whisper a few strangely Spanish sounding Elven words over them, and voila, they cast off the light they absorbed during the day! I've almost got to the point where they don't blow up when you invoke their power. Once I've got that little problem ironed out, I'll be working on various color schemes for the jewels: Excellent Emerald, Groovy Green, Bodacious Blue, Rad Red, etc. Mood lighting. It will be revolutionary.

Those orcs will not have them, I say! Death to all wereorcs!

(What, you were expecting something useful? Oh well. Okay. I agree with Celuien that we don't want to rush to reveal our dreams if we are so lucky to receive them from the Shaman. Keep the information secret as long as possible but leave hints if it seems necessary. I am all in agreement with this plan. More later.)

[Glirdan]

Wereorcs?? WEREORCS!? What rubbish is this!? I don't hunt wereORCS!! I hunt WEREWOLVES!! What is going on in this village?? Farael!! Please send me a sign as to who these foul beasts are!! Please let me aid our Protector!! I will avenge your death! Even if it is against a species that I don't really have any expertise in!!

How do we make the best use of these shaman-dreams, going to random people? My basic instinct would say, we just come forwards with them, one by one, as we have them. The orcs possibly won't get very far with lying about them (one "found out" -lie - when the dream goes to an orc that tries to save a fellow - would get another orc lynched immediately?) - and the chance of them having a dream is about 1/4.(Nogrod)

I rather like Celuien's reponse to this:

Not a bad plan, except for one thing. If we reveal dreams as we have them, then the Orcs can pick off any known innocents, one-by-one, rendering the dreams useless. What the village needs to do is hold back the identities of innocents until we have enough names collected to make the revealations worth while.

Actually, though, it might not be a bad idea for each of us to find some way of leaving obscure hints so that if someone receives a dream and dies before being able to reveal it, there's still some way of picking up on what was known.

I quite agree with you on this aspect. The one thing I really don't like about your plan Nogrod is that if the Wolves...I mean Orcs, could use the name they recieve and say that that person is an Orc. So I don't think we should really be trusting anyone. It would be very dangerous for us. But that's just my opinion.

The down side is that it can be misleading. We'll know who the shaman is after they die, but we can't necessarily look at their posts to see what they knew. We won't know which villagers dreamed or not when they die unless they tell us before they die, which they may not have the chance to do if they are killed in the night. The whole thing could turn against us rather quickly.(Roa)

This is another good point. I was acutally thinking of that myself. There are quite a few flaws with this idea (not that it isn't a good one) that I really think we should let it be. I also believe that when a villager dreams of someone, they should leave subtle hints throughout the day and if it's quite apparent that someone is about to die, then they should come out (if they have the chance) and say if they've had a dream.

I shall be back later.