Mastermind

Information

Type	Demon
Artist	Aiden Roberts

""I do not. Understand. Your ways. Fellow human. Show me. The dirt. Where the holy. Lay. Sleeping. I too. Must sleep. Soon."

Appears in

Cult of the Clocktower Episode by Andrew Nathenson

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Summary

"Each night*, if no-one died today, choose a player: they die. The 1st time you die, you live but register as dead."

The Zombuul secretly remains alive while in the grave.

• When the Zombuul would die for any reason, they actually don’t die, but the Storyteller acts as if they died. The second time the Zombuul dies, they die for real and good wins.
• The seemingly dead Zombuul counts as a dead player in almost every way. The player’s life token on the Town Square flips to indicate their death. The next time they vote, they lose their vote token. They cannot nominate, they may vote with the Voudon, they’re not an alive neighbor for the Tea Lady, and so on. The only differences are that the game continues, the Zombuul still attacks, and the game continues if just two other players are alive.
• The Zombuul only wakes at night to attack if nobody died that day. If a dead player is executed, the player can’t die again, so the Zombuul would still wake.
• If a drunk or poisoned Zombuul dies, good wins. If a “dead” Zombuul becomes drunk or poisoned, do not announce that the player is alive.

How to Run

The first time the Zombuul would die, they remain alive. Declare that they died, but do not add a shroud to the Zombuul. (Flip the life token on the Town Square, as normal.) From now on, the Zombuul registers as dead.

Each day, if a player dies, mark them with the DIED TODAY reminder. (If the Zombuul “dies” by execution, they register as dead, so mark the Zombuul with the DIED TODAY reminder.)

Each night except the first, if any player is marked DIED TODAY, do not wake the Zombuul.

Each night except the first, if no player is marked DIED TODAY, wake the Zombuul. They point at any player. Put the Zombuul to sleep. The chosen player dies—mark them with the DEAD reminder.

Examples

The Zombuul is executed and appears to die. They cannot attack tonight. A few days later, only two players appear alive on the Town Square. The good team is fairly certain that one of the dead players is the Zombuul, and the game continues until one more player dies.

Nobody died today. That night, the Zombuul attacks. The next day, the Tinker dies. That night, the Zombuul does not wake.

Tips & Tricks

• The sinister Zombuul is the deadliest Demon in Bad Moon Rising for its stealth and survivability. The Shabaloth and Po may kill many and the Pukka may strike with their poison, but they are all disappointingly fragile when the town eventually uncovers them. Not so for you - you're hard to find and harder to kill, and your patience is legendary; you're content to lie among the dead and listen peacefully as the town tears themselves apart looking for a Demon among the living, not ever suspecting that one of the rotting corpses in the graveyard still draws breath. The good team should pray you're not the Demon they're facing, because then no player is safe; the dead and the living alike are all equally and terrifyingly suspect.

• You only have the ability to kill at night if nobody has died during the day. This can be difficult, since even though players are dying, it is primarily the good team that is killing them, meaning that a troublesome Exorcist or Courtier hovering around may continue to survive when you badly need them gone. One way to work around this limitation is to speak up for no executions, but the good team may find that suspicious and start questioning your allegiance if you push for that too often. A more reasonable strategy is to encourage executions that you don't think will cause death - for example, a Sailor claim, or the neighbours of a Tea Lady. This gives the good team information, but will also grant you your precious kill... providing the Tinker doesn't drop dead in the middle of the day, anyway. You could also (probably only once) argue for a Mastermind, leveraging the good team's paranoia about whether or not they killed the Demon to have them hold off for a night rather than risking losing the game.

• Kill yourself, and hide in plain sight as a dead player! This can be especially effective if the good team thinks a different Demon is in play, since they will ignore the dead as suspects and focus on the living. Even if they do suspect you, choosing to die at the right moment can throw them off your trail - for example, get yourself executed early to "test" your Sailor immunity, and blame a Pukka for your death. Alternatively and more simply, you can just choose yourself and die at night - players who die at night tend to be good and considered trustworthy. Finally, you can coordinate with your Godfather to take you out at an opportune time, making it look like there isn't a Zombuul in play and that you are an innocent victim of circumstance. Then, you can use your death as a platform to spread misinformation and confuse the good team... or simply sit back and watch the game unfold.

• Rather than dying early, you can instead decide to be a sophisticated undead who lives among the people and lives as long as possible! Surviving this way has several advantages - for one, you can keep bluffing and giving out new information, helping mislead the good team. You're guaranteed to survive death at least once, so you have a backup in the event that suspicion turns on you. Finally, if the good team starts to suspect that you are the Demon in play, you can direct their suspicions to the dead - if they spend an execution or two on your victims, that's an execution or two they can't use on you!

Fighting the Zombuul

• Pay attention to when and why death happens. If there are deaths at night, but not after a player died by execution, you almost certainly have a Zombuul in your midst. Once you know this, you can do the following...

• Suspect the dead. Execute the dead you suspect the most. Talk to the dead to find out whose story is not making sense, and focus on those players. You don't know for certain that the Zombuul is among the dead players, but that is a good place to start. If you can confirm early on that certain dead players are not the Zombuul, you'll have the advantage later in the game.

• Execute every single day. Even if you kill good players, at least that is better than executing nobody and having the Demon choose who dies instead.

• On the final day, it is unlikely that the Zombuul is among the living is. By this point, most Zombuuls will have killed themself at night, or simply been unlucky enough to be executed. Since the Zombuul kills much less frequently than other Demons, the chance that it is already dead when the final day dawns is high. If you have no other information, make sure that the final execution of the game is the execution of a dead player.