It had been cold and rainy all week and it was in the middle of the dark night that the courtiers of Kosumi Castle were roused by the horrific scream that signified the death of Court Jester Vsotvep. Within minutes the whole household had gathered around the lifeless body lying on the cold slate floor of the central hall.
The first to arrive, Cook @Gia and Chamberlain @yebellz, quickly noted that the killer could not have escaped, since the large wooden doors that gave the only entrance to the castle had been barred from the inside. Lord of the House @fiddlehead urged everyone to stay calm as Marshal @KAOSkonfused examined the corpse for a cause of death and the last members of court, Chaplain @Assai and Treasurer @You_Know_Me, arrived.
The victim’s grimace was one of pure fear, but most remarkably the only wounds to be found were four pinhole-sized incisions in the nape of the poor old jester. Master of the Hunt @Haze_with_a_Z let out a scream, while Scholar @bugcat whispered “vampyri inter nos sunt”. Indeed, there was only one explanation:
There are vampires amongst us!
The Rules
Two of the inhabitants of Kosumi Castle are deadly vampires. Their goal is to fill their bloody appetite with all other members of the court. Among the innocents there are one Guardian and one Arbalestier, and the courtiers take turns being Nightwatch.
Each night will take 24 hours. During each night the following happens:
The Vampires will choose one person to attack during the night. This person will die unless protected by the Guardian.
The Nightwatch will be notified in a personal message that (s)he has been selected for guard duty. It will be a different courtier every night, and the order is decided by a random list at the start of the game. The Vampires will not be selected for guard duty and after every innocent has had duty once, the list will be randomised again for the next rounds of guard duty. The Nightwatch has the possibility to inspect one of the players and will be notified of the precise role of this player (innocent, vampire, guardian or arbalestier). If the Nightwatch is killed in action, the court will decide it was too dangerous to assign a Nightwatch, and no more will be selected on the following nights.
The Guardian has trouble sleeping and chooses one person to protect during the night. This can include protecting oneself. Afraid to be found out, the Guardian will never protect the same person twice in a row. If the vampires try to attack a guarded person, they will spot the Guardian (but not recognise who it is) and decide not to attack that night, hence the guarded person is guaranteed to survive the night.
The Arbalestier, a particularly paranoid person, never goes anywhere without a trusty crossbow. Ready to attack at any moment, but rash in making the decision, the Arbalestier will shoot immediately when attacked by the vampires or voted to be executed. The Arbalestier chooses a person to be targeted, and this target will die together with the Arbalestier.
Each day will take 48 hours. During the day, the court has a vote to suss out the Vampires. Everyone sends their vote in a personal message to me, and I will announce the results (including who has voted for whom) at the end of the day phase. The person to be executed is the one who receives the plurality of the votes (i.e. more than any of the other options). It is possible to vote to kill nobody. If the vote is a draw between two players, nobody will be killed.
Whenever someone is killed, it will immediately become clear if they are a Vampire or not, since everybody is well aware that Vampires will transform into a pile of sparkling glitter upon death.
The innocent faction wins when they eradicate all vampires. The vampires win when they eradicate all innocents. In the peculiar case that both factions are eradicated, the court jester wins.
We start with a Day phase: now is the time to discuss who are the vampires. Please send your vote before 2020-03-15T17:00:00Z in the personal message I’ve sent each of you.
Thanks for organizing this game @Vsotvep. We will avenge your death, noble court jester.
I propose that we vote to execute no one on this first day.
The Nighwatch will be a powerful force in this game. If we can prolong the game to have as many nights as possible, we should be able to gain enough information to root out the vampires.
Upon my word, I never imagined that so ghastly a thing could happen within the confines of Kosumi Castle. And that it should be one of us makes it all the more horrific. I’m inclined to agree with yebellz that we should not execute anyone today. Unless, of course, somebody has information, or possibly something intuitive even.
I say, we have a crisis. Let’s buy some toiletpaper and pasta… Oh, wrong thread. Old newspaper and some barley to make bread should do. We should delay the death of innocents as long as possible so we can react to the threat! I agree with @yebellz and @fiddlehead.
Your last point is well taken sir, but I think we should put that project on the backburner for now. And I’ll take this opportunity to affirm that Vsotvep was a good jester. Many a time did his antics have me in stitches.
“From the hag and hungry goblin, that into rags would rend ye…”
The shade of the vorvolaka has fallen onto the open page of our lives; its clean whiteness, with his sharp white teeth, the vampire would despoil and pollute – indeed he must mean to feast as heartily as Grendel in the meadhall, pouring scarlet blood through scarlet lips.
Yet do we not remember the conduct of Alexander towards the trustworthy Persian, whom he tested with a false message, and still also how his lack of care corrupted the scheme? Still, the mōnstrum malum cannot “hide from the Lord within the caves and cliffs” – just as a pregnant woman displays her bulge, so should he who is even more tightly filled with evil let slip his wicked nature.
“By his works we shalt know him,” but by what foulness can we detect the sanguisuga, the devouring Vampir?
Shall we consider the likelihood that we may in fact pick at random the supposed fiends, kill them, and quickly bring to an end what could turn into a nightmare for our estate. If news were to break that a vampire may be among us it would likely be our ruin. Yet, if we miss, forced to try again, what difference will it make in the end, when we each fall on our own swords. We are cursed again if we fail altogether and the beast escapes… we will all burn for failing at what fate has lain before us. Few of us may know the lore but we all know the outcome.
I see no road but to trudge blindly ahead into the gaping maw of the monsters.
My Lord, perhaps like that most famous son of Citium we should “take on the complexion of the dead” and study the ancient codices. As many ships dock in a friendly port so too does much knowledge flow – as easily as hippocras from cup to mouth – into the mind of the man who is willing to accept it. Domine castellī, the parchments have indeed pronounced on our predicament. Alas, only meagrely.
In the land of Socrates, mortal men made their obeisances to the Apotropaei of Sicyon, the antique spirits to whom they entrusted their souls. Yet such time-honoured medicine of the Grecians has been drained out and cast aside, and so to what can we resort? Many have employed the amulets of Taweret and Gorgon, the Lady of the Snakes, but we have no such charms to drape over our racing hearts, none such to cool the the hot red blood that rushes ceaselessly around our bodies.
The Scroll of Sacristans advises the marking of the nazar boncugu or eye-banner, as was the custom amongst the peoples of Troy – “where corn is now” – the symbol of the ever-vigilant eye on a wall or door cows the demon and protects the innocent. And also from the ruins of Carthage the Egyptian writings have come to me through many hands: Echnaton, worshipper of the Aten, had it recorded that the plague of blood-thirst is put about by magpies, which taint themselves with malice as they gorge on the bodies of criminals which lie rotting by the road.
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”
So spoke Almaric: “Kill them all – the Lord will recognise his own.”
Remember ye the tale of Eyam, and think upon the Reverend of that township: when the Eastern Plague defiled and slew the village’s men; its women; its children, infants, and youths; did he not command that no soul should issue from its bounds on horseback or on foot, and by such means to preserve the populace of the lands around? When dies the egg, so dies the wyrm…
Learned bugcat, I most heartily agree that we must keep all our inhabitants close at hand until this is resolved. In the game of go, it’s been said that walls may have ears, but they have no eyes. Here I want to emphasize that although walls have no eyes, they definitely have ears. If the perpetrators become too loose with their tongues, we may discover them in short order.
Your knowledge of portents and remedies is most expansive, and these are sorely needed at this hour. Unfortunately in our present age we are reduced to mere dice throwers. We know not but that in striking at our foe we may strike ourselves grievously.
The mood so far has trended toward patience and vigilance. But we have yet to hear from Gia and Kaos, so I’ll say no more for now.
Dearest bugcat, your histrionics are impressive, your gaze is wide, but alas I plead, the end is nigh, and your rhetoric does little to calm my soul. If we do not call to action what will save us? We will all be pricked at the fuzz of our neck, our bodily fluids let out… how do we not know if the jester himself will not rise, fiendish, thirsty…?
I fear someone must have lead it, or worse, brought it here, invited it in… was it the jester himself? How many of us are vampires? How will we not be drawn out, tempted and fearful waiting for the inevitable? How can we defeat that which we fear, a monster, construed by stories and twisted through the shadow of our perspective?
I fear the worse. We may not be able to both save ourselves and also kill them.
Alas, who are we to say whether the Styx is in drought or in flood? Or with what twisted current its berry-dark waters flow? Around which jagged rocks, o’er which deep and sheer pools? From whence its stream – and, indeed, to where? And of the terra ūltra flūmen, why, we can observe nothing at all! Let it be the land of “no sensation, in which I have neither hope nor fear of the gods”, as was written in Germania. We must hope that the ferryman has taken his coin and carried his soul away.
It is regrettable to distrust one’s colleagues and living-companions. Must we embrace the teachings given to Sesostris the Persian, to “trust no brother and know no friend”? Given time, rats will always find entry to a storehouse; and so too will evil things transgress amongst good men – such is the way of the world! In the same manner, it should be expected that some unholy force may try to animate the jester’s corpse. The folk-tales of the Scythians, which were transcribed and transmitted by the officials of the Emperor Julian, decree that the corpora oscēnī be pierced with an iron rod. Yet would it not be a sin to desecrate his body so?
Vampires are clever lot and won’t be so careless to expose themselves on the first day. Further in any of our efforts to reason about who might be a vampire, they will work to divert suspicion from each other, and eventually vote to protect the other. Thus, any vote without more certain facts and reasoning is even less likely to hit a vampire with 25%, unless we were to choose today with complete randomness.
Two things to note:
If we wanted to vote randomly, we would have to publicly cast a die (say by using discobot) and have everyone commit to that vote. This would be in order to prevent the vampires from biasing the vote.
I would prefer that we do not kill someone on the first day, since voting would give us only a 25% chance of improving our situation, and a 75% chance of worsening it.
We should only kill today if we have some sort of evidence of who it is. I do not believe we should use a random vote using discobot, because that is going to kill someone but not necessarily anyone who is good for us. Let’s wait a day and see how it is then unless someone shows us some good evidence otherwise.
Man is but the plaything of sin; around we go, now one way and now the other, ever rushing to a new ruination of our souls. Many are the polluted wells from which a formerly healthy individual may drink. There is the corruption of greed; to drink blood is foremost the pastime of a glutton – and would not a glutton choose to habitually work amongst food? I am loath to “cast the first stone” but I must note that we have not seen @Gia all day – could she, perhaps, be lying at this moment in a digestive torpor?
(We should refer our minds back to the Historia Naturae and the commentary of Pliny on the work of Vitruvius; insofar as the disharmony of the female proportions, her predilections to magic, devilries and the like – and was it not the wife of Adam who first was ensnared by the sweet charms of the fork-tongued Lucifer, and with deviant hand plucked thus the fruit?)
To quote once again the Stoic texts: “That which is evil, is what we have seen many times before – all things in the world come and go in great circles.”