ok semi big post here, ive been doing a lot of thinking over the last few hours
alright, here's what we know:
in the flavour, stranger has suggested that "poor sinners" are town:
The Devil and his friends in the local voodoo community plan on using the festivities to gather the souls of poor, unsuspecting sinners amongst the crowds for their own nefarious pu
here she's saying that the devil and his friends (aka a team of people, meaning the devil is most likely mafia not 3p - or if he is, hes 3p working together with the mafia) plan on gathering the souls of "poor, unsuspecting sinners". i think thats where the word "poor" comes from in the sinner's role names. given this, it really doesnt make sense for there to be mafia poor sinners.
Or will the saints and the sinners be able to work together and put a stop to his nefarious plans?
again here, this is suggesting that the sinners and saints' goal is to work together, meaning sinners arent on the devil's side.
given that, i think its pretty safe to say that there aren't any mafia "Poor Sinner" roles.
bearing that in mind, aqua's claim, if it is true, only targets townies and prevents them from being able to make a deal - and can also see if people are a town sinner or not.
this claim makes sense, but imo, only if we assume that the mafia have a way to influence town sinners decision to make a deal, because including a role in the setup that's only purpose is to prevent townies from making a choice thats theirs to make doesnt seem likely to me at all.
that must mean there's a role out there who can force town sinners to make a deal, and aqua's role would be town's only chance of preventing it, while ever that role is alive.
assuming you agree with everything ive said so far, and bearing in mind we havent seen any evidence of that yet, that means in order to believe aqua is telling the truth about his claim, we have to explain why theres been no evidence of such a role.
i have some theories myself:
- its an X-shot role, and they havent used it yet.
- they used it on the players aqua targetted, on at least one night
- they used it on saints, on at least one night
- they used it on fog, who already made a deal himself
- they used it on the devil, because they dont know who it is
- they did use it on people but the recipient only gets told about it the following night, and n1 they targetted sessy
all of these theories individually seem unlikely, and some of the options would require maf to be making ? plays by not targeting claimed sinners, though its not impossible. however, to believe that none of them are true, and that aqua's role is therefore useless, and aqua is therefore lying and is scum, is to also believe that the reason for the nokill night 1
wasnt because hk saved aqua (because otherwise aqua would be town), but because of some other reason, like the mafia targeted the devil and theyre bp.
imo, we have no real reason to believe that one of those scenarios is more likely than the other. the chance of the maf not knowing who the devil is or something is about the same as the chance that the hypnotist role exists but is X-shot, or one of the other examples i gave. there's no reason to lean either way atm.
and so my conclusion is that, at this point in the game, its like a 50/50 as to whether aqua's role is legit or not, when looking at it in isolation.
so at that point i decide to look past his claim and instead go back to his behaviour/vibes, in which case i still actually lean town.
however, if i entertain the thought of aqua being town, i then have to explain why his and my role both exist. i can think of two ways we would both exist though.
the first is that 1) there are scum deal-makers, 2) the anti-town-sided consequences of scum's deals are such that if i cancel the deal the next night, that action helps town, and 3) the anti-town consequences of town sinner's deals are such that cancelling the deal the next night is pointless because the damage is already done. this would mean that my role is ineffective if i target townies, and only effective if i target scum deal-makers - and aqua's role would be the exact opposite, being effective only against townies, and not against scum. this would be reason for us both to exist - we both hit blind spots of each other.
the second is that, for balance purposes, stranger decided that having only 1 town role that could, each night, either stop scum from making a deal OR stop town from being forced into it, wouldnt be town favoured enough for whatever reason (and the reasons would involve what the deals actually do), and wanted town to have a bit more chance against deals, and since having 2 roles able to stop mafia deals seemed too town favoured, she chose instead to make another role who was able to only prevent town sided deals, but was still powerful in its own right due to the mini-cop aspect.
both those scenarios are imo fairly reasonable/realistic and i could easily see one being the case, so coupled with my town read on aqua,
after working through it all in my head, i do think its realistically possible that we both co exist, i dont have enough reason to believe otherwise, and i dont want to lynch based off it.
instead id prefer to lynch based on who i actually think has been scummy this game, which is vat.
but obv if town decides its me vs aqua today i aint going quietly and aqua will die today <3
