Day 34 (1st)

## Day 34

### Merge Camp

The last day of the game, Day 34, began with excitement. The Final 3 awoke to find a massive meal laid out for them to feast on, as well as a note telling them to enjoy their reward for going as far in the game as they could. The meal, the note said, was also to help them clear their minds and have the energy to prepare for the Jury questioning that would happen later that night. Despite the three of them largely being tired of each other, they still managed to have a peaceful, enjoyable breakfast before splitting off for the day.

On their own, each player took some time to reflect on their game and how they might present that game to the Jury. Blaike went off on her own to look at the photo of her family that was carefully stored away in the compartment in her boot. She'd kept them in mind the entire time she played. Even though the money they won would be in drachmas, it would appear as mortal money to mortals. Blaike could send it home to her working mom and make her life so much easier. Blaike also felt conviction in her game. She didn't see any reason why she shouldn't win. From the very start, she'd been playing. She made an alliance and was a part of the first major blindside on her original team. At the Merge, Blaike's whole alliance was still there, and she tried not once, but twice to help the opposition take out Marcus and flip the script. Despite flipping twice, she'd still been able to find her find way to the Final 3. Sure, she could have forced a tie for Kim or Zillik, but that would have meant risking her own game, and she had too much to lose. Timothy had played a strong game, and Blaike knew arguing otherwise was pointless. However, he'd also made a ton of enemies. He had double-crossed Dragon not once, but twice. He played idols to protect Marcus, who no one liked and respected. Timothy also had Jade refusing to vote for him as an advantage in the game that no one else had, and he didn't even return the favor for her. He may have been the driving force behind the votes, but he was also the traitor, the schemer, the liar, and Blaike had tried twice to get change the game. The Jury should respect her for that.

Timothy spent a lot of the day trying to plan a speech and think of how to address the Jury. He knew there was a good chance that some of them wouldn't like or respect him. Dragon had a strong sense of morality, and so did Jade, whom he'd released from her promise to give him her Jury vote. Kim, despite being someone who wanted to play a strong game on her own, also seemed like a very potentially bitter Juror. She had wanted to win very badly, and Timothy could easily see her holding his success against him. He'd barely had time to play with Lenobia before voting her out, and he'd never gotten to play with Daniel. Zillik, too, he had a Final 3 deal with. Still, Timothy was the leader of every vote. He'd given the names and called the shots, orchestrating each move as it happened. He found and successfully played two idols, keeping an obvious goat in the game to drag to the end. Maybe his means had been harsh, but he was a child of Athena. He only knew how to play strategically to win, and he felt that's what he'd set himself up to do. Timothy only needed to convince the Jury of that.

Marcus, of the three, was the most relaxed and casual. He felt like his odds of winning weren't so bad, so he didn't overthink his speech. After all, he had two friends on the Jury in Lenobia and Dragon. He hoped they might even advocate for him to win. Besides, his competition didn't seem that tough. Blaike was a wishy-washy flip-flopper who was constantly being berated for not picking and sticking with a side. Timothy was a lying schemer who backstabbed multiple people after forming alliances with them. Sure, Timothy had Marcus in his corner for those votes, but it hadn't been Marcus making and breaking the promises. Maybe some of the girls found him hard to live with, but were they really going to give their votes to Blaike or Timothy over him? He'd found a strong strategic ally and attached himself there. He should get credit for being smart enough to make himself the top ally for the player who found and played two idols. Marcus was untouchable by virtue of his partnership with Timothy, but he hadn't gone around making deals with other players before voting them out the way Timothy had. If players like Jennifer, Kim, or Zillik were holding any animosity, it would be at Blaike and Timothy, not at Marcus, and he was counting on that.

### Jury Speeches

That night, it was time for the Final 3 to make their case to and be addressed by the Jury. Blaike went first, focusing her speech on how she started the game off hard by forming an alliance with Timothy and helping to vote Catherine out. Right out of the gate, she had been willing to be a part of voting threats out of the game, because Blaike had come in with the objective of winning money for her mom and sister. She went into detail about Jade and others calling her character into question repeatedly and made a point to emphasize how Timothy had played even dirtier than she had and how Marcus had behaved horribly and made everyone miserable for the entire game. If her character was bad, then the two of them had to be worse. Blaike also emphasized how she attempted to turn the game upside down not once, but twice, attempting to keep players around that she thought had more of a right to be in the game than Marcus. Altogether, she thought she had played a very solid, strong game that began right at the beginning. Unlike Marcus, she hadn't been excessively rude and obnoxious, nor had she blindly followed Timothy to the end and gotten carried. Unlike Timothy, she hadn't orchestrated the eliminations of every other player after making deals with them, nor had she tried to drag an undeserving player to the end to have an easy win. Blaike felt she had earned the Jury's respect and their votes, and she told them as much.

Moving on to Marcus, his speech was much briefer. He noted that, as Blaike said, people didn't really like him, but it hadn't mattered. He had attached himself to the strategic driving force of the game and was untouchable all the way to the end as a result. He'd outlasted every other player by just realizing that having Timothy see him as an easy opponent was his ticket to the end. In reality, he did have friends on the Jury and had played a strong game. He'd been a part of every move that Timothy orchestrated, and those moves wouldn't have been possible without his awareness that he was on a path to the end. However, unlike Timothy, he hadn't been the one talking to everyone and promising them security just before voting them out. He'd voted them all out, but wasn't lying to their faces the entire game. Like Blaike, he felt that his game wasn't as underhanded as Timothy's, but he felt that overall he had set himself up better than Blaike had to get to the end. She'd tried to make moves and failed, while Marcus saw his path to the end and stayed the course.

Finally, Timothy got to speak. After Blaike and Marcus both dragging him through the mud, he decided just to own his game. He admitted that he lied to most of the Jury and had made deals with them prior to voting them out. However, that wasn't dirty. It was strategic. It was part of the game. Timothy had positioned himself to get to the end with the players he felt he had the best chance to beat, which was how the game should be played. He felt that he deserved to win for being the strategic driving force who orchestrated every single vote he attended. Timothy had also found and correctly played two idols to protect his goat, Marcus. He had also won the most Individual Immunity Challenges, which should be considered a mark in his favor as well, he reasoned. He promised the Jury honest answers to their questions and hoped they would consider that nothing in a game was meant to be personal, only strategic.

### Jury Questioning

After the Final 3 made their speeches, it was time for the Jurors to get their final say and address Blaike, Marcus, and Timothy one last time before voting on a winner. Daniel, being the first Juror, started the speeches out. He told them that he didn't have any particular animosity towards them, but that he wasn't especially fond of Marcus. Living with him after the swap had been frustrating, and Daniel couldn't imagine rewarding him for sitting back and letting others do the dirty work for him. Between Blaike and Timothy, he admitted that he didn't really know Timothy, so he was somewhat tempted to vote for Blaike just because he had actually spent time playing with her. However, he found Timothy's game more impressive. As a child of Tyche, he told them that he wanted his vote to be decided by luck and chance. Daniel thought of a number and asked Blaike to choose either odd or even, and told them that her choice would decide who got his vote. Blaike chose odd, and Daniel took his seat with his vote decided.

Next up was Dragon. Instead of congratulating them, he lambasted them for the sneaky, underhanded way they had played. Timothy, especially, had been the one to approach Dragon and form their initial alliance. Then he backstabbed Dragon by voting out Catherine, then backstabbed him again by voting with Kim and Jennifer instead of forcing a tie. Timothy attempted to explain that Catherine was a big threat and he worried that Dragon may never want her gone and that forcing a tie would have put his own game at risk, but Dragon didn't care to hear it. It was a game, and he understood that, but the fact that Timothy had gone out of his way to form an alliance with him and then literally not even once voted on his side just seemed so unnecessary that Dragon didn't want to reward it. Whatever reasons he had, Timothy had lied, apologized, and then lied again, and Dragon wasn't going to vote for him. Moving to Blaike, Dragon told her that she was a workhorse around camp and great to have around, but he didn't understand why she hitched her wagon to Timothy, voted out someone as strong and likable as Catherine, and then spent the rest of the game flip-flopping around. Blaike explained that, like Dragon himself, Timothy proposed an endgame alliance very early, and she was trying to win money for her family, so it seemed like a good idea to agree to. While Catherine was strong and likable, she was a threat, and Blaike was able to acknowledge that when Timothy brought it up, and unlike Dragon, Blaike had no connection to Catherine that warranted protecting her. As for the post-merge flipping, she explained that Marcus had gotten so obnoxious that she couldn't imagine actually letting him get this deep in the game over other players, so she had tried and failed to make a move on him twice. It was unfortunate, but luckily she was in a secure enough spot to still get to the Final 3. Dragon nodded, seeming to understand her rationale, and told her that, as of right now, she had his vote. To Marcus, he told him that he had felt they were supposed to be friends, not just allies, but Marcus had also helped betray him and vote out Catherine. Then, Dragon added, he struggled to imagine being friends with someone who made everyone else feel so miserable all the time. Marcus argued that making others feel miserable was due to them constantly trying to vote him out, and that it helped him get to the end because Timothy saw him as beatable. It was a good play to be obnoxious to live with while working with the person running the game. Marcus also added that he just generally was more rude and crass than everyone else, and that was a fair observation, but that it was made worse by the game. Dragon, like he did with Blaike, seemed to understand Marcus' explanation, but told him Blaike still had his vote and he'd need to see how the rest of the night played out to consider changing it. The one thing he knew for certain was that Timothy would not be getting his vote.

Lenobia was up next, and she did congratulate the three of them, particularly Marcus. She told him that he already had her vote, but that she still wanted to ask some questions and say her peace. To Blaike, she asked why it was the two of them never seemed to get along after the swap, as Lenobia's goal was to be generally liked enough that people would want to keep around and work with her. It had worked on Marcus, one of the more difficult to get along with people, but not Blaike. Blaike didn't have a definitive answer, but basically told Lenobia it was a personality difference. She had never been a girly-girl, and Lenobia's overall flirty personality just rubbed her the wrong way. Besides that, she had also spent a lot of time with Dragon, who didn't have nice things to say about Lenobia, and Jade, who was pretty sure that everything children of Aphrodite did was just pure manipulation. Looking back, that idea is ironic coming from Timothy's sister, but it had painted Lenobia in a certain light for Blaike and she had just never really given her a chance. Lenobia appreciated the honesty, but told Blaike that much like she was never given a chance, Blaike also would not be getting a chance at her vote. To Timothy, she asked why he wanted her gone right after the Merge, as opposed to bigger challenge threats like Kim. Timothy explained that the first vote after the Merge was more about setting up his numbers than who went out. He needed to make sure that someone from the original Blue Team left to keep him firmly in the majority with Blaike and Marcus, especially since Jade was always at risk of flipping on Marcus, which she did eventually do. Given the gender imbalance, he also wanted a girl gone first just to make sure the guys weren't horribly outnumbered, so Zillik was never on the table as an option. Lenobia, he explained, was the easiest to target because Jade didn't like kids of Aphrodite, Blaike already felt she didn't mesh well with Lenobia, and Kim was already feeling threatened by Lenobia from before. The only opposition he'd faced was from Marcus, who had relented when he realized everyone else was onboard. Accepting that as a sensible answer, Lenobia responded that if voting her out had been so easy, then she didn't feel Timothy had earned her vote. To Marcus, finally, she asked how much of their meeting up had been strategic and how much had been personal, and why he had worked with Dragon if Dragon was so firmly against her. Marcus explained that it had started as a for fun thing, until he realized that he could maybe get an edge in the game by working with someone from the Blue Team. Then he'd realized he really liked Lenobia, and even if they didn't ever date, he enjoyed flirting with her and wanted to keep doing it. As for Dragon, he told her that Dragon was the player he got along with the best at the Red Team, and it didn't feel fair to have to choose between a potential new girlfriend and a potential new best friend, so he wanted both. It hadn't wound up mattering, since the three of them never were together for a single vote, but he had hated seeing them both leave. Dragon raised an eyebrow, listening closely to those responses from his seat. Lenobia smiled and told Marcus again that he could count on her vote, and that she hoped he could get a couple more, because attaching himself to Timothy and letting him do all the betraying had been an incredibly good play in her eyes.

Jennifer was up next and brought a change of pace. To Blaike, she just explained that she was now aware that it was Zillik who flipped to vote her out and he had his explained his reasoning behind that. She told Blaike that she appreciated the effort Blaike made to keep her in the game, but that Blaike hadn't played that strong of a game otherwise. Jennifer commented that, while some Jurors were being hard on Marcus for just following Timothy to the end, Blaike arguably played a worse game. Had she simply stuck with her first alliance and not been flip-flopping, she'd have still gotten to this exact spot, but with less animosity from certain Jurors and a stronger game. Blaike could claim that she rode with Timothy and let him get the blood on his hands while Marcus made camp life miserable, so she was setting herself up for a winning endgame. By trying and failing twice to take Marcus out, she actually faltered on her stance of playing hard to win the game and made her control of the game seem worse by far than Timothy's or Marcus'. Blaike tried to say that she and Zillik had made a move at Final 5 to put themselves in a spot to both get to the Final 3 and that it had strategic merit, but Jennifer argued back that sitting there beside Zillik would be a lot riskier than sitting beside Marcus. To Marcus, she said virtually nothing. He was obnoxious to live with, and while she saw the merit in his strategy, Jennifer couldn't vote for him given how he hadn't acted around camp. To Timothy, finally, Jennifer said that she didn't necessarily respect the way in which he went about the game, but she could respect that he had played it hard to win. His finger was on the pulse of the game the entire time and he was at the forefront of every single vote, which was an impressive mark to her. He brought a goat to the end by finding and playing two idols for him, and Blaike had effectively turned herself into a goat by being wishy-washy for the entire late game. Still, Jennifer warned him, if he slipped up at all or Blaike was able to sell her game better as the night went on, she might be willing to flip her vote. As of now, she planned to vote for Timothy, but wasn't completely locked in, so she told both of them to be extra considerate when answering the remainder of the questions.

Kim had a lot to say, with most of it being extremely critical. To Blaike, she chastised her for never actually having any agency in the game. Blaike tried to argue with Kim, but Kim shut it down and told her that agency would have meant flipping successfully or pushing her votes through. Besides that, Kim lambasted her for not forcing a tie at the Final 6 after Timothy gave her Individual Immunity. With that layer of security, Blaike had no reason to not put her vote on Marcus. Blaike told Kim that, technically, Kim was a bigger threat than Marcus was, so voting her out rather than forcing a tie made the most sense. Kim disagreed, stating that flipping the vote on Marcus and possibly getting him or Timothy out that round would have been the biggest move of the game. She'd be the reason for Timothy's downfall, not Kim. Getting upset now, Blaike reminded Kim that the actual plan that night had been to vote her out, not Marcus. Timothy had put a stop to that the same way he put a stop to them voting out Marcus twice. Taken aback, Kim decided to dig her heels in deeper, but insisting that Blaike still could have flipped her vote when she had Immunity. Obviously, she wouldn't be in danger anymore. Blaike asked why she should vote to keep Kim when she was originally voting for her, and Kim told her that it would have changed the course of the entire game and been a huge move for Blaike. Blaike rolled her eyes at that and told Kim that changing the course of the game at that point probably would have cost her the spot she had in the Final 3. Kim still tried to assert that Blaike could have forced a tie, possibly knocked out Timothy or Marcus, then regrouped and taken Kim herself out later with Zillik, who was apparently willing to vote for her anyway. Seething, Blaike kept trying to argue that it would have been stupid to do that, especially when it could have been Zillik who went home after the tie, not Marcus or Timothy. Kim dismissed her. She called Blaike a coward, told her she had no respect for cowards, and that she didn't deserve to win. To Marcus, she told him that, likewise, he had no agency. Agency would have been voting Timothy out at the Final 5 or 6. He should have gone to the minority and scooped them up. Marcus pointed out that, without Timothy, he'd have been a sitting duck to go right after. Kim shrugged and told him that was just proof of how bad he played. If he needed to keep the biggest threat in the game to survive, then he obviously hadn't set himself up for success. To Timothy, she asked why he hadn't kept her in the game longer. She respected the move, but Kim told him that she'd have happily played the game with him if given the chance. Timothy told Kim that she was the most likely player to go an Immunity streak and win out to the end, and he was sure that she'd beat him if she were sitting beside him. That, or she'd have voted him out at Final 4 or 5. Having received the compliment she wanted, Kim returned to her seat satisfied.

Jade rose to take her turn and first congratulated all three of them. She started off by explaining that, at the start of the game, she had mistakenly assumed that Timothy would want to play with her to the end, so she had given him his word to not vote him out and, in the unfortunate event she was voted out, to give him her Jury vote. To everyone, Jade said that Timothy told her that she didn't have to honor her word if it didn't feel right to her at the Final 5 Immunity Challenge. She was free to vote him out or to not vote for him to win, or even both. That, Jade said, was the difference between she and both Blaike and Timothy. Even when given permission to break her word, Jade didn't. She still had refused to vote for Timothy, and she intended to still vote for him to win the game, as promised, because her word meant more to her than the game. Besides that, Jade believed strongly in karma, and she didn't feel any of them had earned enough good karma to deserve to win. Timothy had played extremely dirty and backstabbed multiple people, Blaike couldn't decide which group she wanted to work with, and Marcus was generally just horrible to be around. Her vote for Timothy was as much about keeping her word as it was about not really wanting to vote for any of them and needing an easy way to decide. To the other Jurors, she encouraged them to vote their conscious and not be too influenced by whatever the Final 3 said. Timothy had lied to and used most of them before voting them out. Blaike had given false hope to minority alliances repeatedly. Marcus. . .was Marcus. She insisted that any of them would be as undeserving of the win as the next, so the Jury shouldn't be swayed by talk of this better game or that better move. All three of them found a path to the end and could tell their story any way they wanted to frame it as a strong game, but none of them had really played respectably. With that soap box speech over, Jade was finished.

Finally, the last Juror, Zillik approached. He shrugged at them. Zillik had almost nothing to say. For Timothy, he just wanted the Jury to know that he had been promised a Final 3, but was just voted out. For Marcus, he had absolutely nothing to say. For Blaike, he said playing with her had been a tolerable experience and he liked her the most of the Final 3. Then he sat down again.

### Closing Statements

After the Jury finished their speeches, each player was given one final chance to speak to them. In her closing remarks, Blaike acted defensive, insisting that she had made the right moves for her game and that her character wasn't any worse off than anyone else's who had just been trying to play. She was put in the middle position more than once and was critical for a lot of the votes, and that should warrant more respect than she felt she was getting. Besides, she had a serious reason for playing hard, and that was her family. Regardless of what the Jury thought, she felt that every move, successful or not, had been the best one at the time. Sure, some of them hadn't worked out, but she couldn't help that Jade wouldn't vote out Timothy or that Timothy found idols for Marcus. That was beyond her control, but she had still managed to find a path to the end against two people that, as far as she could tell, weren't anymore liked by the Jury than she was. For that, Blaike asked them to vote for her.

Marcus was a bit more confrontational in his speech. He made a point to remind the Jurors that they were out of the game, while he was still in it. Even if they hated him for how he was, he had played a better game than they did, no matter which way they tried look at or frame it. Marcus asserted that he'd been willing to make tough calls that others didn't have to deal with. He had gotten very close to Dragon and Lenobia, and Timothy asked him to vote out Catherine behind Dragon's back and then actually put Lenobia's name down. It hadn't been fun to do either, but he did it because he could tell that Timothy would take the blame for it and be his ticket to the end, and that was clearly a better strategy than anything any of them had done. Marcus thought he deserved to win easily over the two, because unlike Blaike he'd been on the right side of every vote, and unlike Timothy, he didn't make endgame deals with people and then put plans together to blindside them right after.

Timothy was somewhat defensive as well, but mostly tried taking a different approach. He did want to assert that he thought his game was the best of the three there, strategically if nothing else. He had been the driving force behind every vote, and as a child of Athena, that was how he always intended to play. Every move was calculate to minimize risk and maximize his odds of getting to the end. He'd won challenges, found and played idols, and made it to the end with the two people he started with by organizing every vote he attended. He admitted that his methods were a bit harsh, and he hadn't fully considered that others might not play the game as hard as he had, but he promised that no lie or broken promise was meant to be personal. It was all in the name of playing to win the game, and he hoped they could appreciate that, regardless of how they decided to vote. He also added that, while Marcus may think he had to make the toughest calls, Timothy had to vote out his sister because she could have beaten him at the end, and that hadn't been an easy thing to do.

### Jury Vote

With speeches over, it was time for the Jurors to vote. When they finished, it was suddenly apparent just how incredibly close the Final 3 had been. Blaike had correctly guessed odd for Daniel's test of luck, earning his vote. Additionally, Zillik had been an easily locked vote for Blaike over the two guys. Marcus managed to not only get Lenobia's vote, but Dragon's as well. He'd been swayed by Marcus calling him a potential best friend and talking about how difficult it had been to go behind his back and vote out Catherine. Timothy had Kim and Jade's votes, as Kim was voting for the player who she felt had the most agency and that she hated the least, while Jade was keeping her word to prove a point. With those six votes in, it came down to Jennifer's vote to break the three-way tie, which essentially meant Marcus was completely out of the running to actually win. Jennifer had ultimately decided on voting for Timothy, as she didn't appreciate Blaike's constant defensiveness and inability to articulate why flip-flopping and making moves that hadn't succeeded on Marcus actually were to her benefit. By a 3-2-2 vote, Timothy won the first tournament, and the game to a conclusion.