Marionette
You think you are a good character, but you are not. The Demon knows who you are. [You neighbor the Demon]
Words, words. They're all we have to go on.
Storyteller cues
First nightWake the Demon. Show the THIS PLAYER IS & Marionette tokens. Point to the Marionette.
Jinxes
An Alchemist-Marionette has no Marionette ability and the Marionette is in play.
If the Marionette thinks that they are the Balloonist, an Outsider might have been added during setup.
If the Marionette thinks that they are the Huntsman, the Damsel was added during setup.
If there would be a Marionette in play, they enter play after the Demon & must start as their neighbor.
If there would be a Marionette in play, they enter play after the Demon & must start as their neighbor.
If the Magician is alive, the Demon doesn't know which neighbor is the Marionette.
The Mathematician might learn if the Marionette's ability yielded false info or failed to work properly.
If the Storyteller would gain the Marionette ability, one of the Demon's good neighbors becomes the Marionette.
If there would be a Marionette in play, they enter play after the Demon & must start as their neighbor.
How to run it (Storyteller)
How to play
- Your single most important job is to behave exactly as a genuine good player would: push genuine reads, vote out players you believe are evil, and never coordinate visibly with the Demon or other Minions.
- Choose a claim whose ability produces information you can report credibly without needing the Storyteller to feed you real data — passive or one-shot roles like the Soldier, Pacifist, or Recluse are safest; avoid roles like the Empath or Washerwoman that generate nightly confirmable facts.
- If you think you are the Huntsman or Balloonist, be aware the Storyteller set up the game to match that role's downstream effects, so lean into the fiction — mention the setup implication naturally to reinforce your cover.
- Your biggest asset to the evil team is that you absorb a 'good' execution slot while the Demon stays alive; subtly steer nominations away from the Demon without being obvious about it.
- The most common mistake is accidentally feeding the good team useful information by being too investigative or by coordinating too obviously with the Demon in public reads — play selfishly good, not helpfully evil.
- If you are preached by the Preacher, your fake ability stops working but you receive no notification, so if good players expect your claimed ability to produce results, you must bluff continued outputs carefully.
How to fight the Marionette
- The Marionette always neighbors the Demon in the seating order, so if you have genuine seat-based information — Empath readings, Flowergirl pings, or confirmed good players — work inward from the edges of suspected Demon zones to triangulate who sits adjacent.
- The Marionette gets no Minion bluffs from the Snitch, so if the Snitch is in play and a player claims a role that suspiciously overlaps with a bluff no one else could have handed them, treat that as a soft flag.
- The Marionette claiming a character with setup implications (Huntsman, Balloonist) is a double-edged clue: if the claimed downstream setup effect actually occurred, the Storyteller accommodated the Marionette — meaning that player is genuinely suspicious rather than exonerated.
- The Magician is your strongest counter: while the Magician lives, the Demon cannot identify which neighbor is the Marionette, fracturing evil-team coordination and forcing the Demon to treat both neighbors as potential threats.
- When Poppy Grower dies, the Marionette does not learn Demon or Minion identities, so watch for a player who reacts blankly or inconsistently to that reveal — a real Minion would gain information, but the Marionette stays in the dark.
Key interactions
While the Magician is alive, the Demon cannot identify which of their neighbors is the Marionette, forcing the Demon to operate without their most reliable Minion ally. Good teams should keep the Magician alive as long as possible to sustain this confusion, and evil teams should prioritize killing the Magician early.
If the Marionette falsely believes they are the Huntsman, the Damsel was actually added to the game during setup, giving good players a real Damsel to find — but the Marionette will act as though they are hunting her, potentially burning the Damsel's cover or misdirecting the real Huntsman hunt.
If the Preacher targets the Marionette, the Marionette's false ability is suppressed but they receive no notification of this, unlike real Minions who also go unnotified — the Marionette will simply continue to claim normal outputs, making it harder for good players to confirm the Preacher's work unless they cross-reference carefully.
When the Poppy Grower dies, all Minions learn each other and the Demon, but the Marionette is explicitly excluded from this reveal — a player who should react to gaining evil-team knowledge but shows no behavioral shift is a meaningful tell that they are the Marionette rather than another Minion.
An Alchemist who gains the Marionette ability has no functional Marionette power themselves, but a real Marionette still enters play seated next to the Demon — meaning the evil team still has a deceived neighbor even though the Alchemist gains nothing exploitable, which can quietly mislead both teams about who holds what role.