The Wolf Game - ISS Relatively Fast - Psychopaths Win!

Lysk Trevise was looking over his control panel carefully, his eyes taking in all of the delicate information the screens were displaying with practiced ease. As Technical Director and Lead Engineer aboard the ISS Relatively Fast he had been staring at this same screen, in this same position, and asked the same questions to himself for the years of their travels together.

“Fusion reactor output at nominal levels… Cooling temperatures showing all green… Helium levels normal. All systems nominal. End data log session.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as he did so. The monotony of his workdays always seemed to dig into him near the end of the day cycle, but he had adapted ancient techniques of self control to bring his mind back up to nominal levels.

He continued to sit in silence with his eyes closed, listening to the quiet humming of the machinery around him, however, a sudden shuddering in the ship caused his eyes to flash open, interrupting his peaceful relaxation. Before he had time to sit fully upright again, a second wave rippled through the ship and knocked him from the chair outright, flinging him back over the chair before he landed face first with a crash, knocking him clean out.

When he woke a few seconds later, klaxons were blaring and the intercom was requesting everyone to report to Engineering Deck 2, where he was now. He scrambled to his feet and looking over the terminal once more, a look of horror crossing his face.

The systems were no longer operating nominally.

I actually agree with Cise’s assessment for once, the structural integrity field seems extremely important for the future of the ISS Relatively Fast, and consequently those aboard (though as lead engineer, this is of secondary concern to Lysk ;P).

This is my take on our current situation, however, and if you are all feeling so inclined to confirm my suspicions please by all means do so. From the conversation, it would seem to me that there are around four of you who seem to be roleless, and your points about the purpose of the systems event is intriguing to say the least.

Actually, my original plan for today was to try something completely radical by petitioning all of you to reveal your roles, so that we could root out the wolves either by double-role claim or through the role-less humans, narrowing our suspects dramatically on day one.

However, the revelations of the conversation so far have lead me to believe that there are in fact no roles at all this game, and instead have been replaced by the ship’s systems, which are up for grabs for either psychopaths or crew members, depending on how they play.

So, that being said, if you are role-less (as I am), please speak up and say so, so that we can be one step closer to confirming or denying my hypothesis.

On completely unrelated topics, Lucas you are a map making god, seriously my friend that is the best one yet. Love it. And also, I am extremely disappointed that no one is roleplaying their vampire character as having lived for thousands of years and somehow ending up on the ISS Relatively Fast >:l

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Emperor Topper stumbled out of his quarters swearing loudly at the deafening announcements.
Composing himself, The Emperor looked around for his Royal Guard, Pendrokar, yet he was nowhere to be seen. “Why didn’t the cowardly bastard fetch me?” he growled at no-one in particular. At this point he realised he had drawn his vibrosword, holding it menacingly above him as if looking for someone to lay into over the disturbance. There was no need for that in a time like this, so he calmly sheathed it and proceeded to Engineering, where the surviving crew members were gathering.

Looking around the deck, he noticed Pendrokar busily hammering nails into perfectly harmless keyboards. He strode over to him and caught the hammer midswing, taking Pendrokar off-guard and disarming him. “S-sorry Your Grace,” Pendrokar cowered, “I-I thought that if we nailed them all down, no-one would be hurt by them again.”
“I think our energy would be better spent finding the killer and repairing the ship, yes?” Topper replied calmly. Pendrokar stared at his Emperor, then relaxed his arm, letting it drop out of Topper’s hand, “Yes, Your Grace, my apologies”

With his errant guard accounted for, Emperor Topper assessed the situation. Whilst the Medbay was clearly critically damaged from all the red lights flashing from every panel referring to it, it seemed prudent to avoid any further damage to the ship, as the Medbay would survive a few more days. A few of the other survivors were like-minded. The Structural Integrity Field seemed like a fairly high priority to repair, as a ship that’s fallen apart is little use to anyone. On the other hand, it’d also make sense to repair the systems that’d prevent us from being hit any further, as it’s likely these will also cause damage, so I’d put the PD Array and the Deflector Shield fairly high up the list. The Medbay probably jointly has the purpose of limited resurrection and post-lynch alignment sniffing like Matt’s role in the last game, so that’s secondary. Power and containment systems are tertiary. Propulsion, CQ, and Environmental Control are bottom priority.
Topper waited for the squabbling to calm down to make his point, though he noticed there was a secondary argument over who to lynch over Flavien’s demise. This seemed ludicrous, though if anyone was to be brought to justice for Flavien’s death, it should be someone who has not made their presence known to the crew yet…

@LyskTrevise - I’m a role-less human, though I agree it’s probable that all humans are, and that the roles have actually been transferred into the systems for this game (which would fulfill martin’s “shaking things up” criteria). I’d also like point out that if anyone is less likely to be a wolf this time, it’s someone that was a wolf in the previous game, and it would certainly be irregular, not to mention eventually fairly obvious, if all the same people were wolves again. But obviously I’ll totally understand if you’re initially suspicious of me.

It’s a shame being an Emperor doesn’t grant you magic powers though :frowning:

@martindevans For clarity, my current vote is:

Repair - Structural Integrity Field
Lynch - Krishna (at least until he arrives to defend himself. EDIT: He did, so vote removed)

While I have basically already indicated that I am role-less and the theory is a good one I don’t think enough people have indicated the same yet to make any assumptions. So I am hesitant to ask everyone else to reveal that they are role-less, because if this theory turns out to be false then all we have done is narrow down the list of potential threats to the psychopaths for them to target.

I am actually role less and NOT a wolf this time. Take of that what you will.

I know i’ll catch flak for that wolf joke :smile:

@Topperfalkon not to throw ourselves under the bus here, but, I’ve been a wolf three games in a row before lol

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This is true, and a risk I am aware of. I think that we are already off to a good start though as far as discussion and information gathering goes, and information in this game is life.

I feel that the benefits outweigh the risks, but obviously if there is someone with a role they should not reply to my post publicly.

EDIT: I have inquired about the possibility to vote for repairs through PM to Martin, and I can confirm that this is indeed not the case. All repair votes must be public, so we can cross that eventuality off the list. Wolves will need to vote publicly, same as everyone else. (Originally I had intended to ninja a facility for myself, as the only human I trust :slight_smile: )

That being said:

Structural Integrity Field.

It looks to me that if everyone votes for one system, that system will be guaranteed to be repaired.
Also, since everyone voted for it, the humans would be guaranteed to retain a controlling vote on the use of that system.

That was the case, and I’ve just quickly retconned those rules to:

Every system voted for will be repaired

So the humans can make a land grab on a load of systems if they like. Or block vote and leave the ship in a dangerously unrepaired state.

That… changes things. Are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure people are going to want to land grab, making the consequences of critical failure kinda redundant. And i didn’t see the idea of a clean block vote actually working out.

edit: Unless the idea is that repairs wont be permanent. Keeping on top of repairs as things break down, with a rapidly decreasing number of people available to keep everything glued together could be interesting.

so does each vote carry some sort of “weight/value” to how much a system gets repaired for?

As Lomsor arrived at Engineering deck 2, the discussion was already heated.

Even though it doesn’t make sense RP wise I’ll vote on the Medical Bay.

I think it will be useful for us later on. I’m too a role less human. Even though, is it really such a good idea for all of us to offload this information onto Lysk?

I vote for Enginish … because of Vampires!

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I see it as off-loading information into the ‘public domain’, but you are all of course free to make up your own minds.

At first I thought that too. But maybe, if someone had a role, he would contact you privately. That’s just my doubt.

Hmm, I mean I see what you are saying, but that is something that a role-owner would have to decide for themselves. Of course, at this point I am no more trust-worthy than any other person, so if they have reason to trust someone else perhaps that person could act as proxy for them and relay the information that roles in fact do exist in the game.

EDIT: according to my count, there are at least 9 people who claim or seem to be roleless. Of the 17 that started the game, nine is a pretty decent size pool, but of course it only takes one to prove me wrong so, I don’t know yet.

EDIT 2: @xamino @Krishna @TerranAmbass what are your thoughts on the situation so far?

Also:
Xamino (not posted yet I dont think)
Security Grid.

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Don’t worry, you’re going to have plenty of repair work to keep you busy :smile:

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I wanted orange. Just orange. What part of that, Arkenbrien, could you not understand?

I vote to repair the Medical Bay. My reputation as a repairman is on the line here, and I will not fail.

Who am I kidding? It’ll probably blow up something soon as I take a wrench to it.

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Thanks! I really enjoyed making it :wink: Tried to match it to Martin’s intro as closely as possible. Everyone feel free to clip parts of it to support what ever RP you need to perform (as I am about to do right now).

Lucas walked towards the maintenance room in Engineering Deck 2. It was right below one of the fusion power stations powering the power grid and right above one of those bottomless looking cooling shafts. The bridge above the cooling shaft was shaky and clanking. And the stairs at the end of the bridge leading to the control room were even more shaky! You could see and hear the bolts of electricity racing up along the walls of the cooling shaft. Always stopping just before reaching the bridge. You never got used to it.

A crowd was already gathering in the maintenance room and having a tense conversations about which subsystem to repair and who might be a prisoner in disguise.

Lucas was a cartographer whose main job was to map out the new colonies once the initial planetary infrastructure was set up. But he was also fascinated about blueprints and so he had been meticulously studying the blueprints of ISS Relatively Fast ever since the ship left Transylvania 2. After all, there wasn’t much else to do in a 3 kilometer ship with a scattered crew of 26. You hardly ever met anyone in these trips.

"Listen up everyone! I am pretty convinced that the Medical Bay should be be repaired first. All of the prisoners have an electronic tag that could be detected with the equipment there. At least this is a theory of mine. And on top of that it appears that the med bay is critically damaged and could fail soon.

I was at lever 5 before. The elevator shaft is pretty much destroyed above level 4 but there is a maintenance tunnel here (points at map):

leading to the medical bay from these relatively intact AND still pressurized areas of level 4."

The med bay should be saved with a high priority as it will most likely be the medic role. But while writing this it seems Martin has changed the rules so it looks like we can actually save multiple systems simultaneously. So maybe we should think about the consequences of either going for a wide land grab versus voting in large blocks:

Land grab pros:

  • we get all the “powers” or “roles” activated in the game early
  • we can ensure nothing catastrophic happens to the ship

Land grab cons:

  • Less information and control on the systems. We can’t trust people enough to be sure they are telling the truth about the powers they gain from a subsystem. And can we even trust people enough to reveal what we find ourselves?
  • Prisoners could get in control of subsystems without humans having a say on their use

Voting block pros:

  • More information and control on selected systems. We ensure a better human control on the systems we grab collectively and we get more information about the systems we choose since we can all collectively confirm the powers we gain from them

Voting block cons:

  • The stability of the ship seems to be powerfully dependent on the subsystems and we might not want to risk it by going for just a few systems

We could of course assign a pair to as many systems as possible to minimize lone controllers. 10 subsystems and 17 players means we can have 7 pairs and 3 solos. Maybe even skip 2 less important subsystems so that the remaining 3 solos can pick one system together (I am assuming that you can’t later gain control of new systems once you pick one, @martindevans ?).

Although I’m not sure if we can trust pairs of people much more than solos. Just throwing some ideas. Hopefully someone can come up with something from this. :slight_smile:

Wait! I am the Necromancer :wink: (yes I’m roleless too)


Votes:

Medical Bay

(for now)

I think whoever suggested that the systems have taken place of roles was dead on.

I’m also role-less, by the way.

To set the record straight, skyentist was the first to bring up the idea that the subsystems were roles, I think the only thing I’ve added is that I’ve hypothesized one step further, perhaps incorrectly, that no players currently have roles at all.

To set the record straight… it was me.

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Oh. Sorry, I thought you were only implying that roles would interact with the sub systems. Anyways, the credit is not that important :penguin:

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I know it’s not important… but you know… gotta set the record straight, else where would we be!

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