Mafia: Thunderrun

***Mafia: Thunderrun*** is the eighth season of *The Mafia Series*.

Breaking the record of the most amount of players, this game was full of great players and even more chaotic gameplay. With all sorts of clashing and deception, no one was quite sure who to trust. With the first player with a third party role, there was more strategy needed for this season. With two jesters, the pot was stirred to insanity, but in the end, the six remaining villagers managed to take out the mafia and claim victory for themselves.

This game lasted from March 9, 2021 up to March 19, 2021. Progressing with relative quick speed, and nearly always on-time deadlines, this game finished around the anticipated period. Due to there being a large number of players, however, this game lasted for a whole ten days before the mafia was caught.

# ***Roles & Twists***

**Twists**
* **The Raid:** Returning from an earlier, non-canon game, players would have the opportunity to embark on the raid, where an advantage and a disadvantage would be waiting for two different players.
	+ **The Selection:** Aster and Havoc won a secret advantage at the beginning of the game as a reward for inviting two new participants to the game (Krayleb and Ziggy, respectively). They had the opportunity to select which players went on the raid in addition to how many went on the raid.
	+ **The Distribution:** Directly before the announcement of the second kill, it was announced who Aster and Havoc chose to be on the raid. Immediately following, the **five** (Cooper, Eevee, Meli, Noah, and Piper) were privately handed over their prizes for participating in the raid. Three of them received nothing, while one got **the shield** and the other got **the mercenary** role.
		- **The Shield:** As an advantage, the shield protects the holder from dying or being executed once. After it has been used, it is gone and the player who had the shield is vulnerable again. ***However,*** the host and holder of the shield, Cooper, forgot that he had the shield. Thus, he was kept in the graveyard.
		- **The Mercenary:** The mercenary is a special role that is *added on to* the holder's previous role. Whoever gets the mercenary is cursed with having to select someone at every trial and make *sure* they die. If their target does not die, the mercenary immediately is killed instead. ***However,*** there was again a misunderstanding by the host concerning this twist, and after the mercenary (Eevee) almost died, the twist was removed, and Eevee remained in the game. So it was considered that the raid never happened this season.

# ***Game Summary***

As soon as the game began, players were immediately calling out their roles to clear themselves. Three early suspects among players were Arriz, Justin, and Noah, all of whom had claimed the role of others. Piper, as the mafia, tried a strategy to lead the game and take on an action role to get others to trust them. It seemed to work, at least for a while, and at a last minute murder switch from Eevee to Ella, Piper with Aster and Brainz decided it the best idea to kill Ella. However, Avtron, the healer, seeing Ella as a possible target due to her large threat status, healed her correctly.

With a lot of suspicion falling upon Justin and Arriz at this point, Ella decided to take matters into her own hands. Arriz later brought Ella into interrogation, proving his innocence. He was even more confused by the situation when Ella brought *him* into interrogation, and they were both cleared as sheriff to each other. With two interrogation rooms in play, Justin kept bringing chaos into the game as everyone formed a plot against him. At this point, three players claimed to be a lawyer: Havoc, Malik, and Meli. But when Havoc stopped claiming lawyer, instead telling the truth about his powerful detective role, Justin began saying that *he* was the lawyer. Immediately, suspicion fell upon him. When he was killed with a record thirteen votes to his name, he revealed himself as the jester and chose to take **Arriz**'s card, leaving the previous-sheriff as the first person eliminated after a hectic first round.

The raid occurred next. Havoc (not knowing that Aster was the accomplice) selected who would go on the raid alongside Aster as the two had obtained this advantage for inviting new players to the server. However, there was a complete error on the host's end that caused both the shield advantage and mercenary disadvantage to be cancelled from the game. So this twist was considered void, and it was removed from the game. Around this point in the game, Brainz, the corrupted joker, made a mistake of his own, exposing him and Piper as the mafia in a group chat with others. But this error went unnoticed among the others in the chat, who were almost all offline.

Piper and Cooper had both claimed the judge role, and the rest of the players knew that only one of them was telling the truth. But even still, the two continued through the game without much opposition. In addition, Aster attempted to prove himself after claiming the role of noble by voting with Piper on Havoc. Even after this attempt, some still had their eye on him due to Eevee also claiming noble. The three members of the mafia knew that their best bet was to kill off **Avtron** next, as the powerful healer. There was still suspicion on Meli, having claimed the lawyer role alongside Malik and seen as a threat for having played so many games. **Meli** was completely blindsided at the next trial when the mafia team subtly led the charge against her.

With the maniac as the new role of the game, players kept accounting for who the maniac might be. But very few players believed that Noah was truly the mafia or maniac, seeing how suspiciously frazzled he was. Noah believed he was running most of the votes, but in truth it was Ella running the game with her numerous allies. With only three players out of the game at the start of round three, the mafia thought it best to kill **Havoc**, not only powerful due to his role, but also because of his controlling threat status with multiple allies.

In a very complex and mysterious plan, Kam was thrown under the bus as someone claiming commoner. Ella and Kam both claimed that they had a plan to take out Piper, as the two were both suspicious of her. Piper seemed to be controlling everything without providing much support for the commoners in return. In addition, she had also claimed a role that could not have multiple players, the judge. Cooper had also said that they were the judge. In the end, the majority of the votes fell on Piper despite Ella's plot. *However,* Jelk, as monarch, made a daring move due to his trust in Piper. He negated all votes for Piper, and so even though both Aster and Brainz turned on her, Piper was spared from elimination. Kam had the next highest amount of votes and was executed. But in another massive twist of the game, Kam was the second jester, and she decided it the best move to take **Piper**'s, eliminating her after previously being narrowly spared.

Immediately after taking the mafia card, Kam was unsurprised to learn she was now the mafia. She told multiple group chats that she was now the lawyer, and everyone else became confused as Piper had lied to everyone that she was the judge. Kam quickly backpedaled and played the confused card, but in a desperate state, Aster advised her to commit suicide, bringing suspicion off of her and onto Cooper. **Kam** indeed followed Aster's plan, and he followed her as the third consecutive mafia of the game. With all hell breaking loose, everyone was unsure of what to do for the vote, as everyone presumed Kam to be the mafia. But instead, Aster managed to pinpoint the blame on **Cooper**, and the true judge was eliminated.

In the final round of the game, Aster began to scramble. Ella was starting to out that he was *not* the noble, as he had claimed, since the votes didn't add up. Aster killed **Malik** in order to eliminate a vote block remaining in the game that would most likely be against him. But at the trial, he was left with no choice, and he came clean about everything. **Aster** was eliminated from the game in a nearly-unanimous vote, and the game ended with no remaining mafia. **Brainz**, as the corrupted joker, and **Noah**, as the true maniac, lost the game. The six survivors for the villagers were **Eevee**, **Ella**, **Jelk**, **Justin**, **Krayleb**, and **Ziggy**.

# ***Voting History***

An underlined vote represents a penalty vote.
A strike-through vote represents a vote blocked by the lawyer.
An *italicized strike-through* vote represents a vote blocked by the monarch.

# ***Awards***

Because this season had more than ten players and three rounds of executions, awards were handed out at the end of the game. They were given to the following recipients.