Come out of the shadows and strike like a viper

**Come out of the shadows and strike like a viper** is the $eason premiere episode of *$urvivor: $ikkim - Temple of Temptation*.

## $tory

### **Day 1: The Marooning**

20 new castaways, from all walks of ~~life~~ ORG, were chosen among many great applicants to compete in the 13th $eason of $urvivor. They got to meet and greet with their fellow cast-mates briefly before being divided into 5 tribes of 4. It caught everyone by surprise but this wasn't the first time $urvivor started a game with 5 tribes. (We last had 5 tribes of 5 in $eason 9: $ingapore.)

It wasn't revealed to the cast but slowly they began to notice the age difference in each tribe and speculated that the tribe division was done based on age. And they were right! The oldest four who are in late 20s/early 30s were grouped together in Ashta, the early 20s in Ekam, 18-20 years old in Nava, 16-18 years old in Sapta and the youngest bunch were in Treeni.

### **Day 2: Final 20 Reward Challenge**

The 5 tribes met back at the challenge field for a brand new tribal reward challenge: Family Feud - $urvivor $pecial. They were asked to work together to come up with most popular answers that were submitted by 100 $urvey respondents. This was their chance to earn extra money on top of the initial game balance of $50,000 that were given to each of them so that they could spend it in their first immunity challenge. How much they earn would depend on their performance ranking. It ranged from $6,500 each for the tribe with best score in Family Feud to $1,300 for the worst performing tribe.

All tribes except for Nava worked very well together as they discussed and coordinated their answers. Nava barely communicated about the challenge to the point where Disc copied Celtic's answers and contributed 0 point to his tribe. They were lucky that this was just a reward challenge intended as a warm-up/ice-breaker and not an immunity challenge.

### **Day 3: Final 20 Immunity Challenge**

The players were anxious of their positions in their respective tribes as being in a tribe of four left no room for anyone to hide. In particular, Disc was in the most vulnerable position in Nava for screwing up in the reward challenge while Meghan formed an alliance of three with Erik and Gwen, leaving Tottzi on his own at Ashta.

As the tribes got ready for their first immunity challenge, another $urprise was dropped. It turned out that the 5 tribes split by age did not even last for one round as for the first time ever, we had a tribe swap before the first tribal council. The 20 castaways were told that they were gonna be split evenly from 5 tribes of 4 into 2 tribes of 10. How they were gonna be split would depend on how much of the money they were willing to spend to ensure their own safety. They were asked to bid at least $1 and at most the whole portion of the money they won from the reward challenge. The top 2 bidders from each tribe would win winning and join Pranayama (प्राणायाम) as a new tribe of 10 while the bottom 2 bidders would Virasana (वीरासन) and attend the first tribal council.

In this "$elfless vs $elfish" dilemma, a trend emerged where the more calm and social players decided to risk their safety by bidding low and getting their closest tribemate to bid low together with them so that they could be swapped to the same tribe. This led to Vulture/Highspace from Ekam and Erik/Gwen from Ashta bidding low together to join the non-immune tribe. The players who were not so confident and wanted to be sure of not becoming the first boot bid the maximum they could. Emily from Nava, Noah from Sapta and both Benj and Tom from Ekam bid the max without even consulting their tribemates. At Treeni, the four youngest players talked it out such that Best and Jazz would bid higher than Logan and Josh to win safety for themselves without getting into a bidding war. Similar things happened in Ashta where the four oldest players followed their plan to bid $1, $2, $3, $4 respectively to keep Tottzi and Meghan safe. At Nava, Celtics and Matthew also willingly bid low as they would rather get swapped together than be with Disc. The most interesting tribe for this challenge was Sapta as Noah was adamant that he was going to bid the highest he could while Coffee overanalysed the value in bidding low. Charan and Jon who would have preferred to be together had to be separated. Charan decided to bid low to join Coffee to attend the first tribal council while Jon got to bid higher to join Noah in the immune tribe.

### **Day 4: $ecret Reward Challenge for Pranayama**

While Virasana (वीरासन) had to start scrambling before heading to their first tribal council, Pranayama (प्राणायाम) faced an unexpected individual $ecret reward challenge. The 10 Pranayama members had to compete against each other to make the best guesstimate on how much they spent in the first immunity challenge. Whoever with the closest guess would be notified in private that they had won a chance to sneak out of camp to visit Temple of Temptation. Two of them managed to use information they had gathered very well to come up with a guess that's only off by less than $400. By a margin of 6 dollars, one of them got to $ecretly head to the first Temple of Temptation. Upon arriving there, he had to make a quick decision on whether or not he would wish to accept the temptation offer to play with fire instead of playing it safe. He took the task in hope of getting his hand on a hidden immunity idol that could be valid up to the Final 10.

### **Night 5: Final 20 Tribal Council**

It was a very entertaining first tribal council with Coffee overplaying the hell out of it even though he was in a rather safe position as he had been actively involved in social conversations after this new tribe of 10 Virasana (वीरासन) was formed. Logan and Matthew were the two names that were thrown out and most preferred to take out Matthew who was the weakest in trying to form new social bonds. He did not seem to have left a good first impression on anyone except Coffee and his OG tribemate - Celtics.

Coffee continued to overplay and suggested to his Penguin alliance with Charan, Erik, Gwen, Highspace and Vulture on how it might be better to get Logan or Josh out instead. He also came up with a plan to use Google Form to conduct anonymous voting within their alliance to act as their mini tribal before tribal. All this plan did was to make his allies more sketched out by him. His OG tribemate - Charan quickly tried to distance himself from Coffee. At one point, they considered to take him out first but in the end they chose to get rid of Matthew first and Matthew became the first person voted out of $urvivor: $ikkim by a 7-2-1 vote. (Celtics voted together with Matthew despite being aware that Matthew was going home to avoid paying the majority tax of $1,300 while one of Coffee's allies threw a vote on Charan to try frame Coffee as the one who voted against his OG tribemate in order to gain $2,600 from the "Betray-for-Pay" temptation offered at their first tribal council.)

Tribal Council Discord Chat: https://dollarsurvivor.github.io/season13/tribal\_council/final20/