Mafia: Mystery Expedition

***Mafia: Mystery Expedition*** is the thirty-ninth season of *The Mafia Series*. This season was a direct storyline sequel to *Mafia: Mystery Manor*, which occurred exactly 20 seasons prior.

Though there was some toxic behavior present in the season, many players still gave their all with unique and dynamic strategies. The 4th Party played a *key* role in this season as they easily claimed their victory. This season also boasted a completely dominant Mafia team that nearly swept to the end of the game untouched.

This game lasted from May 14, 2023 up to May 31, 2023. There was plenty of activity in this game as players consistently presented the hosts with information of the game. Unfortunately, some of that activity was comprised of confrontational disputes. The Mafia members were some of the most strategic and active participants in the game, which likely contributed heavily to their victory.

# ***Roles & Twists***

**Twists**
* **Day Zero:** At the premiere of the game, it was revealed that players would not receive their roles for another 24 hours. During this "Day Zero" period, players were allowed to socialize with one another and begin to create alliances.
* **Murder Mystery:** Just like in its predecessor, this season contained a direct storyline of murder mystery that was connected to the game. Being joined back again by the NPC Rose Kingsley, the players were led on an adventure across countries to find out who was the murderous villain killing all the members of Rose's friend group.
* **Key-Witness Change:** After an absence of 20 seasons, the 4th Party key-witness role returned with an altered win condition. Just like in this game's predecessor, the key-witness had critical information of the story that had to be kept hidden from the players. Upon winning or losing, the key-witness was publicly revealed. For more information on the key-witness' role in this game, see the above role table.
* **Country Guessing:** At the start of every day, players received a clue to the country that they would have to visit next to keep up with the story. During the night, the first player to lock in a country using the confirm command would either obtain an advantage or disadvantage, depending on whether they submitted the correct country. At the end of the night, the player who submitted first was publicly revealed as gaining an advantage or disadvantage. This traveling continued until day 7, at which point the key-witness would win if still alive.
* **Mercenary:** Upon the key-witness winning the game, they were given the special ability to give someone else the mercenary sub-role. The player with the mercenary would automatically be executed if they failed to vote for the player that was executed at any future trial.

# ***Game Summary***

*Written by **Ella**.*

Just like it's predecessor *Mystery Manor*, this game faced an incredible amount of activity at the start of the game. Launching the 0-day twist for the first time where players wouldn't receive their roles and would start as equals, players were divided on the twist but used this time to set their foot in the game. After the roles were given out, Jade, Swaggy, Andrew and Emmi formed the Mafia team while Jelk, Jet and Havoc became the 3rd party of the season. The Key-Witness made it's return, having Enrique putting the role to his name. Due to the big names on the cast, the game was played hard from the first minute. With a few exceptions, everyone went into it very actively and the first claims started to roll. The mafia decided to target players that weren't S or A ranked or a claimed apprentice which left them with Cam, Ava, Jet and Harp as choices. The decision was made to kill **Jet**, who was checked by Cam as detective and Andrew as corrupted detective, in name of Jade as she claimed detective, and it was revealed that Jet was the Witch.

Following this, the whole town was shaken up when Emmi outed Jelk and Havoc as 3rd party as Jelk tried to pull in Emmi as an ally. A series of events followed with certain players wanting to confirm Ava as the Little Girl, voting for her to see if they votes would get blocked. Enrique as Key-Witness informed Chloe, who was following him as apprentice, about his true role and the two started to work together. With new plans made, there was still a large majority for **Jelk** to be executed, being the second 3rd party member in a row to leave the game.

With twenty-two players left, it looked like no one sat back anymore. Slight and Tommo, both being rookies and healers, started to claim in public which grew suspicion towards their direction. Emmi used this to her advantage, who had an rookie-advice chat with them, and led them to heal the confirmed players Hades and Stella. Meanwhile, the mafia decided to target the bartender, that being **Slay**. Andrew faked a healer claim and pretended to heal Emmi. Chaos ensued when majority of the players started discussing the fate of the Key-Witness. With the role being changed and the threatening theory of a death included later on, the group was divided on letting the Key-Witness win or execute them before they'd do more harm. Chloe got a punishment for guessing the wrong country and received four votes. Ava once again tried to get a handful of people to vote for her to confirm her as little girl while Havoc remained a target for being a confirmed priestess. With Ava already getting votes, Havoc saw this as an opportunity to escape elimination and added Cam, Chloe, Enrique and Harp to the save-havoc chat, coming up with the idea to vote Ava.

Ava, as the little girl, became quite unlucky when no votes were blocked for her. In addition, Enrique decided to embrace his role as Key-Witness and planned on confirming the next country, snatching it away from Hades who, alongside town but specifically Emmi and Alfie, got the country right. Due to the fact that only one out of eight votes against Ava got blocked, she immediately gained suspicion from the rest of the town while **Havoc** was eliminated by a slightly margin. It was revealed to him that he was the bonded spirit, deciding to bond with Chloe. Immediately after the execution, a debate started whether or not to still try to confirm Ava or to eliminate her next. Hades and Enrique both confirmed the next country, with Enrique being a millisecond faster as he purposely guessed the wrong country. Another debate happened as everyone shared a different opinion on the vote count, with Chloe admitting that she got 4 votes as punishment for guessing the wrong country. This indirectly caused the villagers to believe Ava was innocent and thus caused the mafia to target her, killing **Ava** next.

The final nineteen players started to become divided on certain things. The triple healer claims of Andrew and rookies Slight and Tommo bothered majority of the players which stimulated Tommo to start playing harder, eventually having the majority leaning towards Slight. Eevee started to show himself more and took over the role of town-leader now that Emmi and Stella had received suspicion by certain players and Ava recently killed, despite being sussed himself as well. While it seemed like town took a huge hit, the Mafia was facing an obstacle as well as Andrew shared with his teammates he couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the game, instead wanting to just survive and follow his teammates. With all of this going on, the bomb exploded at town when it was revealed Enrique guessed the wrong country, resulting in a intense argument between him and Hades, causing half of the group to jump in and share their opinions. The straight vote for Slight was changed in the last hours before deadline as people began to suspect Enrique to be the Key-Witness, having Chloe (as his following Apprentice) to get Jade to guess the next country wrong on purpose so the Key-Witness would be closer to winning. The argument about the three healers became most relevant for town, resulting in **Slight's** execution.

Cam as detective decided to search Slight, using his final check. It was revealed that Slight was actually the healer, causing town to think twice about the whole situation. While Swaggy, claiming nurse, was supported by town, it seemed like the odds for Tommo and Andrew went downhill, as Andrew's recent inactivity hadn't gone unnoticed, and the majority of town was convinced that one of the two rookies must be evil. People started to play their own game and set their own targets. As for the Mafia, it came down to either killing Nia or Piper as they were most trusted by town. The Mafia ultimately decided to make **Piper** their fourth victim. It looked like town was becoming peaceful, having certain players joke around, especially Calvin while updating his fellow players on his interview for a real Survivor game. However, as soon as it was revealed Enrique guessed another country wrong on purpose, town exploded and the emotions became very tough as a lot of players went hard against each other.

Tommo, as the original target, used this new discussion to his advantage and with help from Hades, Enrique was now targeted again. Jade, who had vouched for Enrique upon this point, outed him as the Key-Witness which stimulated Stella, Calvin and Alfie to change course and go against Enrique as well, while Eevee was hard to convince. With a witch hunt going on for Enrique, mostly led by Hades, Calvin saw an opportunity to twist up the game once again by getting himself voted out, taking Enrique's card to become the Key-Witness himself. Despite convincing some people, the large majority still voted out **Enrique**. With Enrique's fabulous departure, Chloe as apprentice now became the Key-Witness and had to finish Enrique's job. Due to Chloe claiming to certain people she followed Enrique, majority of the group were convinced Chloe was now the Key-Witness and decided to target her while Eevee started to suspect Andrew. Tommo, who originally got targeted in Andrew's place, used a conversation with the host to clear his name. Ironically, people chose to believe Tommo which caused people to suspect Andrew now. With one group going against Chloe, the other group was going against Andrew. In the meantime, the mafia had to make their fifth kill. The two names that kept coming up were Nia and Stella. Due to ve's confirmed role, good position and almost figuring out the pattern of Mafia kills, the mafia decided to kill **Stella** next.

The punishment for guessing the wrong country went to Calvin, who had his role revealed in public. With Calvin now being confirmed jester, he could play more like a free agent and gathered information on who was suspicious of who. With Eevee already going for Andrew and Emmi sharing with town that the graveyard supported the idea of keeping Chloe, a new plan was made to cause Chloe and Enrique to win as combined Key-Witness, though Hades went hard against this idea as them winning could harm town but changed his thought about this later during the round which grew suspicion towards him. With Chloe out of the picture, two groups were formed. While the mafia sided with the more neutral players, targeting Tommo, Eevee set his plan in action to take out Andrew, getting the three least active players (Harp, Meli and Nia) to join him. With Eevee and Alfie still suspecting each other of being the mafia, at one point the idea of blindsiding Eevee was brought up but wasn't used. Instead, Alfie used this vote to buy an extra vote as the aristocrat, wanting to confirm themselves. With all these plans going on at once, the graveyard becoming more active and people playing even more harder, the steaks began to rise, with **Tommo** being executed during this hectic change of course.

The Mafia started to pull the strings as Emmi, Jade and Swaggy all got some control over the game on their own parts, with Andrew still being targeted. Especially Swaggy and Emmi became confident in their winning chances, as Emmi had control over the graveyard and Swaggy had control over his social connections. They decided to kill Nia, getting rid off her ability to vote twice. Meanwhile, Calvin, Alfie and Eevee were circling around each other, suspecting each other heavily while Hades guessed for the final country, guessing wrong which caused him to die instantly. With the Key-Witness twist over, Enrique was brought back from the dead and joined Chloe in a special chat as they had to give the Mercenary role to one of the remaining players. Wanting town to lose, they gave it to Alfie and remained victorious together as Enrique and Chloe left the game as winners for fourth-party. Eevee was now targeted by the entire town and only saw one out-way; making Calvin believe he was mafia and getting him to take his card, getting him voted out. By doing so, Calvin would become a town role as was forced to fight against the mafia. Calvin thought he made a deal with the mafia, only to be tricked by Eevee. This plan didn't succeed as Calvin decided to flip back, which eventually resulted in Eevee getting a large majority of votes to become the next person executed.

With ten players left in the game, the Mafia decided to kill one of two inactive players left, this being **Meli**. As Hades got the cursed spirit role, he was able to send a message by telling town to execute Jack next. With the graveyard getting more active, Hades eventually would get frustrated with Calvin and Swaggy discussing Hades's gameplay and indirect cause of the Key-Witness winning, which led to a rather heated argument. Following this, the game started to become more calm and predictable. The Mafia decided to throw Jack's name out, with Alfie, Cam, Calvin and Harp following them blindly. The town chat became a little chaotic after Harp and Calvin spammed the chat with emojis, which eventually resulted in a debate between Calvin and Alfie. Hades sent another message from the graveyard - this time to Swaggy - to suggest to keep Alfie in the game as they were confirmed town, not knowing that he actually sent this message to the accomplice. Despite trying to stay in the game throughout these events, **Jack** was voted off unanimously.

Following the execution of Jack, every remaining player started to become active and shared their theories while the graveyard actively started to suspect everyone left, trying to inform the active players through corrupted psychic Emmi on this. Within the Mafia, Swaggy and Emmi started to have different visions on how the end-game should be played. Calvin caused the entire game to be shaken up by fighting Emmi and Alfie, creating an alliance chat without them and show to be upset with them. Despite feeling upset with Emmi, Calvin did this to assure the safety of Emmi and Alfie in the game, hoping that they wouldn't be targeted by the Mafia. Alfie's reaction to this, feeling genuinely hurt due to past events happening between the two, caused not only the public chat but also the non-game chats to explode. The aftermath was rather calm, with Emmi and Swaggy not being on the same line still for the next kill. Swaggy ultimately got Jade to kill **Cam** next, instead of Emmi's target who happened to be Calvin. Calvin had been putting all his trust into Swaggy this round, with Swaggy using it as an advantage for the mafia team. Cam's last breath allowed him to share his thoughts and suspicions only for **Cam** to be killed next.

With only seven people left in the game, four of them being mafia, Hades decided to use his spirit message to make Andrew and Swaggy look suspicious, sending Calvin the message. Another discussion happened between the Mafia as Swaggy (and later Andrew) wanted to vote Calvin out, make Alfie vote Harp so both Calvin, and Alfie would die since they were still the mercenary. Emmi, who grew extremely close to Alfie, went against this idea and instead pushed an Harp vote. Meanwhile, Calvin used Hades's message to actively track down the Mafia for one final try, taking the public chat(s) to make a stand. There was no much effect to this as the vote remained on Harp, causing Harp to be executed. Harp was the jester and instead took Calvin's role, who happened to be jester as well. Per the new rules, the jester whose role got taken would die instead causing **Calvin** to die. In addition, Alfie unintendedly forgot to vote which resulted in an self-vote. As the mercenary, this caused **Alfie's** immediate death. With only the Mafia and Harp left, Jade stabbed one of her victims one more time, that being **Harp**. Harp took **Andrew's** role and became the Corrupted Detective, joining **Jade** as *Head Mafia*, **Swaggy** as *Accomplice* and **Emmi** as *Corrupted Psychic* as the Mafia won the game!

# ***Voting History***

\*Chloe received four extra votes against her as a disadvantage for failing to guess the correct country.

# ***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.

# ***Trivia***

* Daichen won the viewing lounge prediction game for this season.