By popular request, here is my story and that of the investigation, which I shall attempt to keep mercifully brief. Some of you are familiar with the last KGB-style investigative effort, which failed. There were some important differences in this one, but it failed as well. Nonetheless, it was a lot of fun. Threatening people can be very entertaining
Obviously, the basic tenet is to force compliance and control the vote when neccessary. Properly executed, this ensures the survival of core investigation members. The death of Chad early on due to not voting (we would have won the vote, despite Nisgeis' underhanded efforts, if he had voted) was an unexpected development, but not a failure of the process.
The next step is to gain credibility and expand influence. This is accomplished by a variety of means. Some of you recieved harsh threats for noncompliance. Obviously, the vast majority of you never recieved the death penalty for witholding information. Most bad lynchings were the result of activities outside the investigation, and in one case (Oberon), my unavailability. Only JALU3 was lynched for witholding information and that was because he was particularly obstinate, and we needed an example to be set. He was chosen simply because we didn't have any good suspects at the time.
We also sought to simultaneously expand our influence and catch a monster (further expanding it) by using a complicated system of "baited" communications and informers. In its' most basic form, this consists of convincing a person to send a certain PM to a few other people, at least one of which is a member of the investigation. Then we sit back and see if they send the proper message, and double-check the investigation members they send it to by seeing if they report it like they are supposed to. Of all the people I talked to, Nokia and SandyCaesar were the only ones to be exonerated by this process. Nokia was only lynched because of the impossibly small chance that Nisgeis was both a seer and a monster.
If you are reading this Nokia, you were probably somewhat confused by the PM I sent you, followed by a lynch vote. It was intended to make sure that your next target would be Tarrasque or no one at all. Despite the fact that you passed all the communications checks and were truthful in your last interrogation, it was still less probable that Nisgeis was the monster. I was so convinced of his veracity that you were lynched simply for being unconfirmed. A total failure on my part, I admit.
On the other hand, the system worked marvelously well against Silverraptor. He began by giving incomplete information immediately, and trying to claim that he was a guardian. If that doesn't scream "infiltrator" I don't know what does. He insisted on leaving out the two bait PMs until he thought he was in a lot of trouble. By the time he reported them, it was too late for him. The investigation had locked on and accquired its' first target. Even worse, he ceased his attacks. That says; "I'm scared and I am doing whatever I can to buy more time"
However, since we had a bonafide seer, and he had been intimidated (probably) into not attacking, there was no point in lynching him unless we were absolutely sure. The initial lynch vote against him was a fluke, called at the last minute because Chad was being threatened. As the most likely (and as it turns out,
only monster at that point) he was the best choice. In the end, Chad's failure to vote sealed his fate, both by game rules and by popular choice.
Imo, this was the point at which the balance shifted. Nisgeis seered SR just to be sure, and told me he was a monster, which I was pretty sure of already. As it turned out, that act made Nisgeis a monster(sort of, he had a choice), an eventuality I was totally unprepared for. If Nisgeis had said SR was a human, I would have had SR lynched anyway to test Nisgeis. Nisgeis was generous enough to provide plenty of correlating evidence that he was misleading us already, so I think I could have had him killed post-mortem. My plan was to suicide after I had informed Tarjak and a couple others I investigated long before the vote was clear, thus establishing my credibility and pinning a monster.
Against all odds, Nisgeis reported SR as a monster, and it was all over for SR. Even more, he reported that an additional evil presence was on the boat, a truly brilliant move that took almost all attention off of him. Almost.
I initiated a plan to brig people insted of killing them. The intent was to get Tarjak installed as leader at some point, or keep Jim, if he was human, and then have them release all of the brig captives except for Baggygreen if it looked like Nisgeis was the monster. If Nisgeis was not the monster, myself and whomever else was totally trustworthy would instalynch the brig captives and escape. It probably would have worked, if some people hadn't been so determined to kill themselves and other people they were not supposed to.
In the end, it was me who goofed up everything for the humans. I was so convinced that Nisgeis could not have been a monster (thanks to his machinations), that I let Nokia die and even voted to elect Nisgeis as leader. At that point, I was trying to buy time with a plan that totally failed, believing that Nisgeis could be challenged in a lynch vote on the last day if I could convince him not to kill that night.
To those of you who think that Nisgeis had an easy time of this affair, I will tell you that he did not. He passed check after check until it was too late for us. He may have been aided by the fact that he was a seer/monster, but he defeated all countermeasures arrayed against him.
And those were good countermeasures. Multiple covert PM checks, testimony analysis, and other measures were taken, none of which produced even a hint that he was lying.
So there you have it.The story of the Investigation, or at least as much as I care to tell. Transcripts of interrogations and conversations are available upon request.