The Syndicate

Scotty wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:09 pm Tk;dr:

ok mech talk. (If you don’t like mech talk, put your fingers in your ears and make ambulance sounds)

I dunno if anyone else has read the book, but I have some ideas on a few things. It’s hard to talk about em without spoiling the book but in general I’m going to talk around certain mech that doesn’t spoil too much.


So hypothetically, if every person gave me their breath today, and I was then elim’d at end of day, all breaths in the game (save for secrets we don’t know from Vasher) would be gone. Kablooey. No respawn.

Breaths don’t seem to be something that can grow in trees. I find it likely that we lose more breaths from people NK’d than we end up giving to others. Which means reaching multiple heightenings is going to be few and far between. Only mafia can coordinate best in that regard.

So benefits of giving breaths is something I see most efficiently utilized if you know are you about to be eliminated and don’t want to waste your breath. Giving it to your one or two top town reads is probably just the move.

Currently if I gave my breath to someone at random, I have a 66% chance to hit a town. Which are meh odds, but not terrible. If we miselim today, it turns into probably a 50% chance if we were to do the same tomorrow. If we yeet mafia today, it turns into 70% chance tomorrow which isn’t bad, but not that different from today. I guess 66% is fine, but not a bet I’m always ready to make. Definitely not at 50%.

The human aspect of this is that I think people are far less likely to just..give their breath away. So this is probably all moot. And the heightenings are probably not a thing to count on this game.

Anyone else can weigh in on this, but if we miselim today, the odds get worse of successfully randomly giving our breath to a town for the rest of the game unless mafia are systematically voted out, but I don’t like the risk of giving away breaths on a day with no info.

So. I’m probably not gonna give my breath away for that reason.

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“The second heightening: MAFIA (4 breaths)
Mafia who achieve the second heightening may choose at night to janitor next yeet as long as they have voted for the person yeeted.”

This is a questionable ability because it’s expensive and potentially outing for mafia to do so if we can see vote totals. I wouldn’t hinge on mafia using this unless, like, everyone voted for one player the day before.

“The second heightening: TOWN (4 breaths)
Town who achieve the second heightening now have the capacity to protect themselves or others from a night kill. Attempting to do so will reduce the submitter's total breaths by one.”

This is a great ability and is probably the bread and butter of town’s utility. I don’t see anywhere that says claiming is not allowed, but claiming to have 4 breaths is probably something we should consider in our arsenal.

If someone came into day saying “I have 3 breaths” it may be in a 1-breath town’s best interest to volunteer their breath to that player to bolster the group.
Could the 3 breather be mafia? Sure? Could the person offering to gift the breath be lying? Sure. But I think it’s something to consider down the line.

“The third heightening (6 breaths)
Players who achieve the third heightening will now resist a nightkill or negative action taken against the player who has achieved the third heightening. If this ability is used, the player will return to having a single breath. Further, if they submit to use this power and a protection does not occur the power will not qualify as being used.”

This one confounds me. Because how I’m reading this is whoever reaches 6 breaths can just protect themself as infinitum, every night. So as long as they don’t get yeeted or POISONED, they’re invincible, since they just get to do it again the next night if they were protected. Until they get NK’d, and lose 5 breaths. But it sounds worth it.

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The other thing is Vasher. I’m not going to spoil it, but he’s got some interesting stuff going on, and even though the syntax says that he gives his sword away to poison someone, but the power will ‘not qualify as being used’ if the target isn’t yeeted end of day. We know from the role list that mafia can’t be poisoned until the leader is killed, and light song can’t be poisoned.


What we don’t know:
-what constitutes a successful poison?
-will the poisoned player be announced publically?

So what we can infer:
-poisoning will most likely kill at end of day unless that player can’t be poisoned
-both factions have at least 1 player that can’t be poisoned, which means VT town could just be poisoned and killed off as a regular target. This means that Vasher is tried and true 3p that doesn’t serve town wincon. Because then he would just be a town.

Austere this is so hard to talk about with spoilering the book. I have reason to believe the sword, however, will mostly function as a means for Vasher to fulfill his win con in searching for mafia. But if he can only do it once per game? Something doesn’t add up if it also kills town. Unless he gets it back.

Here’s my prediction with mech and theme:
-Vasher starts with 6 breaths. He can’t give them. They’re probably used for a role ability.
-VT can probably be poisoned, but it probably doesn’t fulfill vasher’s wincon. But because he can secondhand kill town, he’s not on town’s side per se. But I would wager he’s more of a town-siding 3P than we can usually expect.
-So he probably has to spend breath or something to get the sword back and try again.

ps I am not Vasher, but if Vasher revealed himself I wouldn’t be immediately on the train to kill him


Thanks for coming to mech talk.