ZooStuck 4: ZooStuck Mafia - Day 10: Murder Production Substantially Up

"We apologize for the delay, there was an error in the paperwork and we had to... oh. Looks like that's been taken care of! Now, let's see where Ixcaliber's allegiances lay."

-A "roguelike" adventure but after the player-character dies, the next player-character shows up at the exact time the first player-character showed up and can interfere with the first player-character. And the same thing for all future player-characters, all of them are additions to the first timeline. It's possible to prevent a previous player character from dying (as quickly) by altering the timeline this way, and it's possible to recruit the "rescued" former player-character into your party. And of course, this being "roguelike"-inspired, this is necessary to handle some otherwise impossible situations.

Somewhere along the line, Ixcaliber had acquired a strange power to create new party members in a life-threatening situation, but it was difficult to use.

Each night, they could select one player. If that player tried to kill them, then a new party member would emerge and fight off the attacker. That party member would also serve as an extra life for Ix from then on.

Ixcaliber was unconcerned with the fate of the company. They just wanted to get three additional party members so they could explore the dungeon. What dungeon? We don't know, but apparently there was one.

"Hmm. Not a loyal shareholder, but not exactly hostile either. They weren't the troublemaker we were looking for. Which means it must be one of you two!"

The Powerpoint screen suddenly turned around to face the last two remaining shareholders and... oh, wait, Kaynato just stabbed AgentBlue. Guess that's settled, then.

You can speed up time for free, but slowing it down costs you life essence.

AgentBlue had the power to speed up time freely, and had used it so recklessly that the entire universe was sped up. Of course, nobody realized this because everything else was moving at double speed too.

In an attempt to fix this problem, AgentBlue could strain themselves to use the other part of their power: slowing time down. They could slow down one person's action, moving it from night to day.

They had this vague idea that slowing down somebody who died the same night would release time energy or something and that would somehow fix everything if they did it three times. So that was Agent's win condition.

AgentBlue was technically aligned with the town.

Now there was just one shareholder left. But who was Kaynato, really?

First there was Waterworks, then there was Steelworks followed by Powerworks. Now comes...

Show Content

You are a gauche gamer. You just broke into the headquarters of Bethesda Softworks in hopes of correcting some grievous wrongdoings or at least get some answers why.

A week has passed since the release of Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI and already the entire gaming community is in an uproar. You tried to be very forgiving with Fallout 4 and TES V, since Bethesda introduced a lot of new features and they seemed like they're going to do it better next time. Unfortunately they didn't, not only did they repeat their mistakes they also introduced new ones that never happened in the previous games.

That hack Todd Howard has to pay for this, he can't just keep getting away saying "It Just Works". Who does he think he is? King Crimson?

Now you must look for him and make him pay for his hubris.

Kaynato was in the late stages of a quest to destroy Todd Howard. Unfortunately, there were a few complications.

The first was that Todd Howard was already dead. Most people would consider this adequate revenge, but Kaynato had far crueler fates in mind than mere death. So there was only one course of action: die, and pursue Howard in the afterlife.

This lead to the second complication: immortality.

The quest to destroy Todd Howard had granted Kaynato several Daedric artifacts, which when used together made their wearer completely indestructible. However, those artifacts had also fused with Kaynato, and they had a will of their own.

For the most part that will was "kill people, we don't care who". Consequently, each night Kaynato had to make a kill.

They were hard to kill, but the Daedric artifacts themselves were not as well-protected. If Kaynato were attacked three times, that would be enough to break the enchantments and kill them, allowing their vendetta against Todd Howard to continue and granting them a victory.

Being flung out into the void would be of no help, of course, so they had to try not to get lynched.

Kaynato was a hostile third-party. They were not aligned with the conspiracy, but had to be dealt with for the town to claim victory. Spoiler alert, that didn't happen.

"Well, it seems Kaynato is the sole shareholder of the Will Smith Corporation, which of course means they have a controlling interest. This company is now in your cruel and unforgiving hands.

Oh, but before you tell us what you're doing with your company, our background checks are in on Paranoia and Wheat.

YOU ARE PARANOIA, YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT ANY OF THIS MEANS AND YOU JUST SHOWED UP WITH NO CONTEXT AND NOT A WHIT OF A CARE. YOU'RE HERE TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST - RUIN SOMEONES DAY COMPLETELY OUT OF LEFT FIELD AT YOUR WHIM. AND LAUGH AT THEM.

LOUDLY.

NO LOUDER, LAUGH LOUDER, DAMN IT.

Paranoia did not actually read the application instructions and just sent in a PM with the above text. Which became his role.

Paranoia had the ability to pop up on someone out of nowhere, becoming the target of their night action. His goal was to ruin someone's day by preventing their win condition with his action, whether it was his normal action or got changed by other abilities.

He was technically aligned with the town. It will surprise no one that he used his action on Schazer and got brutally murdered for his trouble.

As for Wheat...

You are a fish.

That's it. Thats the plot. You're a fish what more do you want.

Wheat was a fish. That's it.

Okay, so there was a bit more. Wheat joined the conspiracy on a vague offer of revenge, not that they knew what they were getting revenge for. But their only real aspiration was to let everyone know they were a fish.

Anyone Wheat visited or who visited Wheat would be informed that Wheat was a fish. Wheat would win if at any point, half of the living players had been so informed of fishiness.

And guess what? Agent knew, so in that brief moment between the graveslam and Kaynato concluding the game, Wheat won.

Congratulations.

Night actions, full winner list, and quicktopic links will come tomorrow.