Aowyn

**Aowyn** was a contestant of SurviVARs: Wildemount.

## **Profile**

**Discord:** Kit-Kat

**Gender:** she/her

**Timezone:** EST

Choosing between Riley and Aowyn for the top spot was nearly impossible. These two both played such incredible games, even when they looked so different. It’s poetic that the season’s hero and villain take the top two spots, and that both made FTC using their equally effective but entirely different play styles. Aowyn played a game of loyalty and trust, but was able to be cutthroat where key moments demanded her to to be.

Aowyn is fairly new to ORGs, and she was off to a rocky start at the beginning of the season. She was in close with Jake from the beginning, but otherwise she didn’t have great social capital. She came into the game with three players she knew in real life (Akicita, Sindira, and Lavinia) but none of them were on her tribe so she was basically a sitting duck if they lost. She had a basic trio with Lars and Jake, but Roman’s trio had an idol to wield as they wished. When Famine and Shaun swapped, things looked no better for her. Thankfully, OG Brenatto never lost a challenge, and Aowyn survived to the first swap.

Aowyn was swapped with Roman, Lars, and Shaun, but she wasn’t super close with any of them. Her and Roman had been targeting each other through the first two rounds, but in a fun stroke of irony the pair were forced to work together when Sparky’s Skull card left them as 2 out of the 4 eligible votes after losing the Scavenger Hunt. The pair strategized on the best way to come out on top, and when Deadpool and Ano came to them with a plan to vote Sparky, they decided to target Deadpool instead so that when the other two voted for Sparky they would win out 2-1 on the revote when Deadpool couldn’t vote anymore. Unfortunately, Deadpool and Ano voted for Aowyn to employ the same strategy. This was the closest that Aowyn ever was to going home. Ano was upset that they hadn’t even attempted to talk game with him this round, but Roman and Aowyn (both social queens in their own right) were able to talk them off the ledge and they flipped to eliminate Deadpool.

Aowyn narrowly survived, but seemed to emerge with more social capital because of it. She went from Roman’s rival to being one of her closest allies, and this couldn’t have been better for her game. They swapped again, and she lost Lars and Shaun while gaining Jake and Orange. She picked right back up with Jake, and seemed to be in an awesome spot. In the double tribal, with Ano immune, Bella became the easy target. Aowyn was still somewhat wary of Roman despite working together, but she ultimately decided hold off on the big move. When people were trying to decide on a decoy vote for Bella, Aowyn volunteered, which could have been disastrous if Bella had an idol. Still, this indicates exactly the kind of player that Aowyn is. She wound up not receiving any votes, since Bella voted for Roman instead, and Bella was sent home 6-1.

At the merge, Aowyn reunited with Sindira, but Akicita and Lavinia didn’t survive to see it. Aowyn had social connections on all sides, and no threat level to her name. Unfortunately for her, Ano won the first immunity challenge (alongside Riley) and so Sindira became the majority vote. Aowyn was now the last of her D&D group standing. Shaun received Roman’s vote that round, and a lot of people theorized that it might have been Aowyn (perhaps because of her real life connection to Sindira), and people were beginning to grow wary of her partnership with Roman.

At the auction, Aowyn bought her way out of being able to vote, but also earned the Sentinel Advantage which allowed her to secretly grant immunity to any other player in the game. She wound up granting this to Sparky as a sign of trust. Sparky didn’t need immunity, since Shaun had blown himself into having a huge target, but it helped cement a relationship that would be pretty key to Aowyn’s mid-merge game.

Aowyn now had four key relationships: Jake, Roman, Ano, and Sparky. In the Orange boot, she would use all three. Jake told Aowyn about Sparky’s idol (which he had learned about from Dongoosh), and a plan started to form to flush his idol. When Aowyn learned through Ano (who learned through Orange) that Dongoosh was trying to flush Sparky’s idol while eliminating Aowyn, she attempted to flip the numbers right back onto him. This flipping and flopping of targets continued, until a new alliance was formed between Roman, Aowyn, Ano, and Sparky. At first they were planning on piling votes onto Flower (partially because of the Flower/Jake feud, and Aowyn couldn’t risk losing Jake). Instead, they switched their votes to Orange when they learned that he was pushing Roman’s name. Roman was able to play her idol, and Orange was sent home.

Aowyn’s new alliance had all the power, but that also meant they had all the threat level. Thankfully for Aowyn, it was Roman and Sparky that took most of the heat, at least in part because of Aowyn’s alliances on both sides. Jake was protecting her, which proved to be huge for her game. This was when Aowyn emerged as a real swing vote, and when Jake and Ano dipped out of the tribe she was left as one of six players left, but without some of her key allies. She was still close with Sparky, but felt that the time was right to flip on Roman when Flower and Riley came to her with the plan. Sparky was pushing Dongoosh’s name, and since Roman had the Throne card which allowed her to see the first two votes cast, this meant that Aowyn and Riley needed to vote for Dongoosh first to make her feel comfortable that she wasn’t being betrayed. Unfortunately, what they didn’t know was that her card let her see when votes changed as well, so when they flipped their votes into her this gave Sparky a chance to play his idol for her. Aowyn already felt bad about flipping, but when Flower played his idol on Riley as well, she was placed in an impossible situation. The only two eligible votes were suddenly between Dongoosh and Sparky. Even though she had been targeting Roman, she had no desire to turn on Sparky, so she broke the tie and sent Dongoosh to his grave. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Aowyn was in the driver’s seat.

Aowyn has a lot of heart, and at this point we have everyone a 24 hour break to let them breathe and process the prior round. Aowyn really needed that. Despite doing what was best for her, the decision to send Goosh home was eating her up, and his final words weren’t helping. She had a great conversation with the hosts though, and we did what we could to affirm and comfort her. Feeling reinvigorated, she entered the final seven as one of the most important swing votes in the game, alongside Ano. Sparky won immunity, so they had to choose between Flower and Roman as the two targeted threats. Ultimately, the pair decided that Roman was too dangerous to keep around, and they sent her home. Aowyn still had Jake and Ano in her pocket, which set her up very well moving forward.

People still weren’t seeing Aowyn as a target despite her holding almost all of the power for the last three votes. Riley was gunning HARD for Aowyn, but this was because of her relationship with Jake and Ano which could be deadly in a F5. This round became a delicate balancing act, but the main target seemed to be Flower. Riley came to Aowyn, Ano, and Jake in order to join them in a plan to blindside Flower, but Aowyn really struggled to believe that Riley would actually do that. She was suspicious enough to beg that Jake and Ano throw their votes into Sparky just in case, and this decision ended up indirectly saving Jake’s life in the game. Riley had given an idol to Flower, and he had in turn plotted with Sparky to get Jake sent home. If not for Aowyn’s last minute split, it would have worked. Aowyn was a tiebreaker once again, and she was forced to choose between her two allies in Sparky and Jake. Ultimately, she sent Sparky home and protected Jake.

The F5 was the only round where things didn’t go Aowyn’s way. Flower was the clear threat here, and Aowyn had Ano and Jake as her numbers. It looked like a clear cut vote, but Flower made a great pitch to Riley and Ano that Jake and Aowyn were inseparable, and convinced that pair to flip on Jake. Aowyn lost her closest ally, but entered F4 still in a good spot. Flower and Riley were the biggest targets left (despite Aowyn arguably having more consistent power than either of them), and Aowyn had a final three deal with Flower and Ano. Ano would never have flipped on Aowyn here, so it was really just a matter of immunity. When Riley won, Flower was the natural target. He was sent home as the final juror, and Aowyn had made it to the Final Tribal Council!

At FTC, Aowyn was Riley’s biggest hurdle. Her game was solid, and she had a lot of friends on the jury. Even though Riley beat her in a 6-2 vote, Aowyn gave her a real run for her money and had a lot of jurors torn between the pair. It was Aowyn’s first time pleading her case like this, and Riley had received help from Flower that let her perfect her pitch. If Aowyn had been given that same assistance, I think we might’ve had an even closer FTC, which is hard to imagine.

Aowyn didn’t win the game, but she was easily one of its biggest players. She was loyal to a fault to the players she was committed to, but this didn’t stop her from making hard choices at key moments. She seemed to always be in the driver’s seat yet never had a real target on her back. She ran away with the Hero award by a mile, and earned a nomination for Best Duo alongside Ano (and very nearly earned a nomination with Jake as well). Her split vote at the F6 was nominated for Best Move, and you have to give her some major credit for the Dongoosh Clusterfuck that wound up winning that award. She was so close to a POTG nomination as well, because of how dominant her social game had made her. At the end of the day, though, she earned one of the most coveted awards of any season: Fan Favorite. It was a competitive pool, and she had some big opponents, but the spectators chose Aowyn as their favorite player after multiple rounds of voting and re-voting. Aowyn was a massive highlight of this season, and it really came down to that epic battle against Riley in the F2. The two faces off for the win, for the title of Fan Favorite, and now for the #1 spot in rankings. That shows you how influential these two titans were. Aowyn (henceforth known as Kat) made such an impact with her game, but even more for her heart. She’ll always be a cherished member of this community, and I’m blessed that she’s decided to stick around and even join the hosting team! Now that she’s such a big part of SurviVARS, it’s hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t a part of it.

### **Nominations**

**Best Duo (With Ano)**

Ano and Aowyn didn’t start this game as a duo, but they sure ended it as one. I can’t pinpoint exactly where this pair began, but once they were locked in together, there was no separating them. They voted together through the majority of the merge, and this pair was instrumental in the masterful split plan that thwarted Flower’s scheme to eliminate Jake at the F6. Aowyn wasn’t willing to vote for Jake at the F5, so Ano’s flip was the only place they really diverged throughout the merge. At F4, it looked like these two were inseparable, meaning that Riley and Flower were really in the hot seat. Sure enough, Ano and Aowyn stuck together to the very end, duking it out at FTC like all duos always hope they can. While neither of them won in the end, it was so great to watch them run so much of the endgame together and go as afar as they could.

**Best Move (Orange's Blindside)**

This round was so chaotic, and I think it might have been the longest recap of the season. So many plans came and went, and I only want to go so far in detail here (mostly because I don’t have time to crack this egg open again), but it pretty much ended with everyone wanting to pile the votes into Sparky and see someone get idoled out. Everyone wanted a different final target, so the social dynamics at play were wild. Everyone was leaking everything, and everyone wanted to get their way here. After two easy votes at the start of the merge, this was where the dam broke. Ultimately, Sparky somehow ended up receiving 0 votes, and Roman perfectly read the situation in order to play her idol and send the most socially powerful player (Orange) home. The best move of the round looks like Roman’s idol play, but so much was happening behind the scenes that it’s hard to say that anyone really played this round poorly. Everyone was on top of their game, everyone was working overtime to get their plan in place, and it was the start of the best merge game this ORG has seen.

**Best Move (Aowyn's F6 Split)**

Like Orange’s blindside, there were a lot of plans here. Thankfully, it’s much easier to break down. Initially, Riley was masterminding an Aowyn blindside, and gave her idol to Flower so that he could save himself and send her home. Then Flower decided to use the idol for his own evil purposes, working with Sparky to blindside Jake. Aowyn picked up on how off the vibes were, so she begged Jake and Ano to split the vote. This single read determined the entirety of the rest of the season, in hindsight. If not for Aowyn, Jake would’ve been idoled out. It was her plan to split the votes that resulted in the 2-2 tie between Sparky and Jake, in which Riley flipped in order to send Sparky home. Aowyn may not have walked away with the win, but this simple plan changed the entire endgame and pretty much stopped Flower from being able to steamroll the last few rounds.

### **Awarded**

**Hero**

Aowyn reminds me of so many SurviVARS greats, like Biggy and JRay, who decided to stick to their allies through thick and thin, and actually pull it off. Oftentimes, loyal players get treated like chumps who get eaten up and spat out by the big bad game of Survivor. But Aowyn somehow managed to stay fully loyal to those she loved while still playing a pretty dominant game and deciding so many of the votes. Everyone wanted Aowyn on their side, and it gave her a lot of power that she could have abused, but she never did. Even though flipping on Jake would have been best for her game, she refused to. Even when flipping on Ano at F4 could’ve been a big move for her, she refused to. Most people would relish her position as a swing vote or tiebreaker (a position Aowyn was forced into at several points of the season), but Aowyn detested this. She wasn’t playing Survivor to be cutthroat and nasty, and she didn’t necessarily want to be the most powerful player in the game. But when power was given to her, she always stood by the people that mattered to her. The best leaders are people who don’t want to pursue power, but use it fairly when they have it, and that’s Aowyn to a T.

**Best Move (The Dongoosh Clusterfuck)**

This move was chaos incarnate, and there was certainly a lot of BS involved here. Yet, looking at it closely, a lot of people played this round really well. Jake played his advantage at the perfect time, and wound up winning immunity because of it. Ano was very smart to use their SWOP and remove Jake from the game, leaving their alliance with a lot of control. Riley was able to save her idol thanks to her relationship with Flower, who was able to use his mimic idol thanks to his relationship with Orange. Flower and Riley expertly navigated Roman’s Throne card that allowed her see parchments, changing Riley’s vote (and Aowyn’s, since Flower had lost his vote to the mimic idol) at the last second to prevent Roman from knowing they were trying to blindside her and Sparky. Roman easily got Sparky to play his idol after seeing them change their votes, a testament to her social game with Sparky. Roman threw a rogue vote onto Riley in order to cover for an idol play (which was a good read even if she threw it into the wrong direction). Only two votes counted in this Tribal Council despite 8 players being in the game, and this was a testament to everyone having good reads, playing advantages at the perfect time, and all moving optimally to try to outplay each other. Dongoosh was the ultimate casualty, and it was heartbreaking to see, but this was still top notch gameplay across the board.

**Fan Favorite**

Aowyn came into the season as a relative newbie, and she often felt like a fish out of water. She played this game with so much heart, and it ate her up to have to betray and blindside her friends and allies (which is why she often chose not to). As she was thrown into the position of tiebreaker and vote decider time and time again, it was clear how hard this position was for her. Aowyn just plays with so much love. This made her very dear to the spec lounge, and she very quickly found herself as one of the most rootable members of the cast. She won Hero of the season for a reason, after all. It’s always a bit of a risk to cast newbies amidst seasoned all-stars, but Aowyn proves exactly why it can absolutely be worth that risk. She may not have won the game, but she won over everyone in this server with her heart, humor, and beautiful spirit.