The Aetherialists - Discussion Thread

[-RosenAdmin]

To go against Spiritual value in this world is the gravest of heresy. Ascension to Spirithood makes this heresy a worthwhile sacrifice.

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[Frenzy]

Hello Hello, 'tis I.

Thanks for picking me for your team, though I must confess I didn't expect that.

[HailMarek]

Welcome welcome. Was I the first to recruit you, or are you also in one of the cults already?

[Frenzy]

You were the first.

[Frenzy]

So, Fearless Leader, what's the plan?

[HailMarek]

Ah, sorry, got caught up in some stuff. So. Given that we have no protection from kills or votes, and no mechanism for obtaining new members, our chief objective has to be ensuring our own survival. That means not looking like Aetherialists or Envoys, which means we really need to avoid looking linked if at all possible. The Cults shouldn't be expected to go out on a limb for their Followers, after all, especially at this stage of the game. For that reason I think we should be very ready to bus each other if necessary - ultimately the first of us to die costs us a hell of a lot less than the second, since we have no individual abilities & one loss only marginally increases how many people we need dead to win.

In terms of our own target priorities, we should be fine with the vote landing anywhere but us. For our kills we'll want to avoid hitting the Envoys if at all possible, since wasting shots into a vest doesn't get us any closer to our goal, which also means that getting the Envoys voted during the daytime would be nice (gets Lesser Envoys out of the way, & marks Greater Envoys so we know where not to shoot, plus in the latter case ties up Cult firepower in the night so it's not aimed our way). This conveniently lines up with what the Cults will be looking to achieve during the day (ID & kill enemy Envoys) so that's all good cover-wise.

Speaking of cover: since we don't currently have info on any of the cults, our safest bet is probably to pretend we're Uninitiated for today, but that's also the obvious Aetherialist play & offsite identities are concealed so we probably could get away with feigning Cult affiliation. Does run the risk of getting caught out if the Cults are being relatively open internally, though. We definitely don't want to fake affiliation with the same Cult since each Envoy pair will presumably have shared identities already - Uninitiated don't seem to have incentive to fake Cult affiliation, meaning it'd look like at least one of us has to be an Envoy or Aetherialist, neither of which is good from a "dodging kills" perspective. If I do end up acting like I'm part of a Cult D1 I think I'll go with Hades, unless you have a reason why not; just mentioning that now to avoid overlap.

Anyway that's a textwall of my thoughts on the game so far (sorry for going on so much); what're your own thoughts?

(also, re: Fearless Leader, I'm pretty sure our roles are literally identical post-recruitment)

[Frenzy]

Most of your thoughts I basically agree with, except the "we don't want to shoot grand envoys" bit, because yes, we do. We need at minimum one of them to die for us to win, and we're the main source of kills in the game, meaning we can't rely on others.

There's really no reason to risk pretending to be in a cult, because it would almost certainly come out later and screw us over.

One question for you: should we kill this day phase? Our faction kill is available day or night, so we could start off with daykills, or wait until night. Either one would (effectively) lock us into a time slot though, so it needs to be considered carefully.

[HailMarek]

Shooting Grand Envoys is gonna be the highest priority for the Cult kills, so until/unless we get evidence of those having been wasted, I'm reasonably comfortable to try & focus ours elsewhere. It's worth bearing in mind that Followers should generally be willing to sell out any Grand Envoy they get a lead on (since hindering a Cult's recruitment means you're less likely to be recruited into it, so you're more likely to stay in one of the other two Cults & benefit from the death of an enemy Grand Envoy), so once we do get recruited, we can try & send the Cult we're in after anyone we suspect of Grand Envoy status.

Like, yes, we may eventually want to shoot them ourselves...but given how they're liable to draw fire I think we're better served focusing elsewhere starting out.

We don't get kills until D2, unfortunately, so that question is moot.

[Frenzy]

The cults only have three kills among them though, so they aren't liable to use them easily, and thus we can't rely on them doing it for us, y'know?

[HailMarek]

Sure, but those kills are basically for the Grand Envoys, and I don't see as we're in any hurry to get rid of them, no? So we can wait until later into the game & let the Cults hopefully take care of it for us, & if they misfire or end up too reluctant to shoot then we can worry about that down the road. All we care is that a single Grand Envoy dies eventually.

[Frenzy]

Fair

[HailMarek]

Hm. May be reading too much into this but I suspect NemoMarx may be an Envoy, based on the comment about how Envoys would know identities of their Cultists. Not too strong a suspicion yet & based on semi-gut interpretation of that statement but figured I'd float the suspicion.

[Frenzy]

I don't have reads on anybody as envoys so far, but I think we're probably gonna want to kill Nictis if nobody does it for us. He has a very strong offensive game, which would be bad for us if aimed our way.

[HailMarek]

Hm. Feels a little unsporting but I suppose we'll have to pick our targets somehow if we don't have a better idea of who we need dead by N2.

Speaking of which, giving it a bit more thought, my inclination is that we'll likely want to stick to killing at night until/unless we have a strong reason to do otherwise - that way we can always have a Day kill available in case something comes up that we need it for, and we'll be making our kills with maximum info. Only advantage to killing during the day is that it blocks night actions, & that only even does anything if we're hitting an Envoy who's already lost their vest.

[Frenzy]

Speaking of which, giving it a bit more thought, my inclination is that we'll likely want to stick to killing at night until/unless we have a strong reason to do otherwise - that way we can always have a Day kill available in case something comes up that we need it for

Except we won't, because the kill has a cooldown of a full cycle. If we kill at night, we have to wait for the next night to kill again. if we wanted a "spare kill in case we need it", it would have to be our oneshot doublekill, which we can only use at night.

[HailMarek]

Nope - check your rolecard again. If we kill at Night, we can kill again the following Day.

[Frenzy]

Huh, misread that. NVM.

[HailMarek]

Little uncomfortable having both of us on the YP wagon like this, but OTOH your justification does make sense. In any case, what's done is done. Got a plan here or just chipping in for verisimilitude?

[Frenzy]

I'm honestly just playing today like I would if I were legit unaligned. YP's posting style grinds my gears.

[HailMarek]

Yeah okay that's totally fair.

[HailMarek]

Do you know if you'll be around for EoD? I'm moderately concerned we're gonna see some last-minute shenanigans.

[Frenzy]

definitely will be.

[Frenzy]

Maaan the normal play persona want to point out the error Nictis is making so bad, but we actually want people to make that error so I can't.

[HailMarek]

Which error? I often find that it's worth correcting these things in-thread simply because someone's likely to catch it anyway, unless it's something especially subtle, so staying in-character is worth revealing it a bit sooner. See also my own recent posts.

That said, FYI I am planning to let Nictis sell me on the JBJ vote if he can make it convincing enough, 'cause TBH I'm much more scared of him than I am of YP and Nictis being Nictis I think the push has a real chance of going through.

[Frenzy]

"BTW the aetherialists can get recruited and actively want you to talk in your unsecure chat."

...Actually, that might be something to pressure Nictis on if we need to.

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