Firstly, let us go over the facts of this case.
Number 1 -
Ekko and Lord Melkor were Busdriven with one another last night. We can confirm this through Pot Goblin's action, which was accompanied by a message.
Number 2 -
Ekko was targeted by an ability that blocked any negative actions he used. This, of course,
includes Destructive abilities. This was sent by Pot.
Number 3 -
Ekko was not blocked last night. He confirmed this by pointing out that one ability of his had shown up in the writeup, and the other had not.
Number 4 -
Ekko was missing an ability from the writeup. His immediate assumption was that he had been roleblocked.
The ability was said to be preventative.
Given the above, we can deduce the following:
Ekko had a specific ability blocked or cancelled, but he was not fully roleblocked.
Now let us make some character deductions.
Ekko strongly believes that he has no mechanical evidence against him. This position is rather strange, given the nature of this game. Surely, one would consider that his thread position was tenuous enough to make him a prime candidate for failing, but alas he truly believes it is impossible.
Throughout my interaction with Ekko, he has continued to probe for information as to the nature of what I purport to have against him. Not once, however, does he opt to call into question my motives. Up until now, he has insisted that there are grounds to suspect me, and even today he appeared to outright claim he suspected me, though would not commit to the position. Despite that though, he hasn't once sought to pull back some thread control around this - he has very much treated me as if I'm town.
Ekko's role appears to be designed to be uncatchable. This, in turn, raises into question his previous position - that the game can be reliably solved through mech. His insistence has been thus - we can win this game by removing indies, and then relying on mechanical information to carry the day. With a town role, allegedly, being able to circumvent all sorts of investigation, surely he could anticipate scum being able to affect that, or even emulate it. It's SRM, after all. His role certainly has negative utility, and I'll admit it even fits his character to create a role that can't be mechanically-cleared, but it also fits his character to create a role that cannot be mechanically-caught. My sole reservation with this is whether Fuji would have allowed it. It's not impossible.
Ekko, lastly, throughout tonight has drip-fed parts of his claim to appeal to players. An example of this can be found wherein he claims to have gifted Pot a cop ability. Why does he gift Pot a cop ability? No one knows. His interlocution strategy has been to attack the character of his opponent - to undermine or insult them, in a way that does not strike me as earned or natural frustration. It's more akin to lashing out, a sign of panic.
And now for the finale, and the detective's deduction.
I have an ability called "Guessing". You can see it in last night's writeup. What this does is allow me to declare a target, and two action types - a primary one, and a secondary one. By action type, I mean, Protective, Preventative, Destructive and so on. If the Primary type matches an ability that my target uses, their action becomes the Secondary type. For example, if I targeted Player Z, a Vigilante, and said "Primary: Destructive" and "Secondary: Protective", the kill shot that the Vigilante sends will instead become a protect.
Last Night, I targeted Lord Melkor with that ability. For the Primary, I chose Investigative. For the Secondary, I chose Destructive. I should note, by restrictions of the game, Destructive here will only include Role Crushing or disabling Passive abilities. Of course, if we follow the evidence we outlined above, that means I actually used my ability on Ekko.
And with this, we now have an explanation for why Ekko's ability did not show up.
He used an Investigative ability, and it became Destructive, which caused Pot's action on him to trigger and negate it. Why is this the conclusion? Because we can see that I wasn't blocked. My Guessing is in the writeup. We know Ekko was blocked conditionally. And with this, he would have been targeted by the exact conditions.
And the lie he is in, of course, is that he claims the ability type that was missing was Preventative. In fact, there was nothing Investigative about it.
The second lie he is in is his own claim. By claiming to have used an ability that negates Busdriving on Melkor, he would have negated Melkor's busdrive of himself and Ekko. And if Melkor was immune to negative effects like this, he would have no reason to busdrive himself with Ekko in the first place - he would have wanted to move a kill for example to a player they wouldn't be able to lynch.
All in all, I think we can safely assume there is scum present between Ekko and Melkor. They may even both be scum. In fact, that's what I am currently leaning towards. The mechanical inconsistencies are explained completely through this, and there are no real grounds to suspect further shenanigans.
Q.E.D Ekko is Scum
Simply by the existence of this ability, this level of reasoning was possible for me.
What do you think, everyone?
Flowa I'll try to keep you safe this game
