I suppose I can do a day-by-day play-by-play on my end.
I've done some pretty crazy things in mafia games to get reactions and judge based on that. I had actually decided before this game that if I was mafia, I was going to make the claim publicly the first day. Then... I wound up as the godfather, and figured that was a little too much of a risk to take.
Onward to day 1. The goal this day was to lay low. In games before as a townie, I've found a surprising amount of information by talking to people in private messages and in the thread. Typically the games where townies communicate frequently and fluidly are the ones which are most difficult for the mafia to win, and from the outset, my goal was not to facilitate an overwhelming townie alliance if I could help it, as the communication and free-flow of information that presents would be very challenging to overcome. Mop it up's vote fit the plan. I recommended to BeautifulShy that she talk to everyone like she used to, and be generally frantic. I didn't start out with much advice for Insanolord.
Two things happened. The first is that Khushrenada reached out to me. You saw much about that above. I contacted my mafia, and asked them what they thought, and ultimately decided to go for it.
The second was that Insanolord was being voted out, in part because of my vote against him. I've been in this situation before as godfather. In fact, I believe we ended up voting out Mop it up seven years ago the first day in a similar situation. At that point, back then, I gave up. I resigned there was no way around it, but at least it would be good cover. This time around, I had a little more sense.
To start, I recommended Insanolord start playing the game. I recommended he pick a character and role-play as it, and post some sort of speech from the character. Then I realized he wasn't familiar with Ace Attorney, and recommended he pick a famous movie or TV lawyer. I went to research any speeches made by Matlock I could find and couldn't find anything good. Then I remember hearing some speech made by Denzel Washington in Philadelphia. I figured that would be pretty solid. I rewrote the speech as if Insanolord were giving it about this game, shared it with him, and made one final gambit since, from my perception, Insanolord was already doomed unless action was taken: I told him to lie. Pretend he's the investigator, and contact people to save him. That way, if any mafia members voted to save him, they'd have some cover that townies would also have when asked why he was voted out. Stories would be consistent. Evidence wouldn't point anyway except that everyone was duped by a mafia member.
I've always wondered why mafia members in trouble rarely claim to have a role, especially early in the game. It can substantially grow trust issues among the townies. Once someone realizes they've been duped once by a mafia member claiming to have a role, anyone else with a role that steps forward will face additional scrutiny. It's a move to oppress those in the townies from uniting. In this case, it was barely expressed or played out the way I had intended, but I knew there could be a lot of potential utility.
The plan that formed in my mind, going into the second day, would be to take advantage of the chaos resulting from a stopped hit on the first day, the fallout from Insanolord's turnabout, and to try to gain and control as much knowledge in regard to both of those elements. My ideal plan was, if Khushrenada was telling the truth about protecting me, to recruit the townies with roles under my fold and manipulate their operations, primarily thanks to Insanolord's move to tell people he was the investigator.
Picture this: In the average player's mind, there no way I could be in the mafia, after all, I had just survived a hit. Now, the obvious next step for an outgoing player would be to form an instant alliance with trustworthy players. But there's a problem! As noted above, even when the mafia is involved in townie alliances, they typically get communication and information flowing among townies, and any action based on this information suggests there is a leak, which helps to identify the member of the mafia that is involved. There was no way I'd form a townie alliance unless I was capable of controlling this from the start. On day 2, when the townies with roles contacted me, I was going to make the claim that two people came forward as investigators. I was going to control the confusion, keeping all townie roles hidden from each other over fears of mafia lies, allowing me the opportunity to prevent any real alliance while also controlling all information and even guiding the actual investigator to investigate people who would be of no consequence or were already known. The plan was to do this until the investigator intended to investigate a mafia member, and on that night, make the hit to kill him. The next day, depending on the townie/mafia ratio, I'd either accuse the mafia member who made the claims and vote him out, thus perfecting my cover, or I'd accuse a random townie, and vote him out, ending the game for the mafia.
You can see plans didn't go this way, but at this point in the game, as the first day came to a close, this was my rough outline of how to play the game, should I survive my own hit.