FIRST TRIAL

[bathymetric]

[ Eventually, time seems to run out. Davy Jones takes a lap around the boat, rather tersely instructing everyone to gather in the theatre.

Once everyone is inside, he herds all of you onto the stage, which has been cleared save for the controls to the elaborate pipe organ built into the room. ]

Step lively, passengers! There's a long ride ahead of ye!

[ And once everyone is on that stage, Davy Jones sits at his organ and begins to play. It's not a familiar song to any of you, and it doesn't sound kind, but it does sound wildly complicated. Or it would be, for someone who can't play with his many tentacles.

As the piece begins, the stage begins to descend. Well, at least the part you're all on, as well as where Jones sits at the organ. And it keeps descending, at least through a few floors before long. The elevator shaft is dark, the music echoing until it fades, the controls apparently too far from the pipe organ above before long. Jones sits in silence as the cramped ride continues. Dull bulbs set into the wall provide just enough illumination to tell where you all are, but the walls are thick steel.

You have to have descended several floors, you imagine, when light starts to creep in at the edges of the platform, along with voices. They sound distant and distorted, but the first thing you hear when the platform breaks into the trial room is men singing, rough and distant.

You can also see the... surprisingly somber room, considering where you are. The walls and floor are all made of glass, allowing you a view of the sea as the ship you now stand on the very lowest deck of pushes through the water. Lights illuminate enough to tell that it is indeed water out there, but the water is perhaps not the most interesting thing out there in the dark.

Below the ship, illuminated by a ghostly aura, sails (for lack of a more fitting word) The Flying Dutchman. If you look closely, sailors more monster than anything else man the deck, and seem to be the source of the song. Davy Jones casts the ship a sad look, then stops a foot on the floor and the song quiets. ]

Take your places, passengers. Ye have this chance alone to find the killer among yer number.

[ In the center of the room stands a circle of sturdy metal podiums. Carmen's seems to be almost... decades older than the rest, coated in rust and barnacles. In the center hangs a circle of screens, currently switched off. ]

If there are questions, I am going anywhere no sooner than the lot of you.

[ Jones moves to look out the window, leaving you all to talk amongst yourselves.

Welcome to your first trial. ]

Comments

[sharddrive]

Edge of the pool, maybe? That'd be pretty solid if you hit it right, even from just a normal fall.

[ahelpingpaw]

Wouldn't that need you to be in some very...convoluted? Positions for her to break her neck on that?

[Like inside the pool, or standing near the edge at just the right distance, or...something]

[sharddrive]

Eh, not super convoluted?

[He wiggles a hand a little.]

If she was near the edge and slipped forward, she could've leaned back while she was going down, and- you know.

[ahelpingpaw]

I dunno, if she had hit anywhere else except one exact spot then we wouldn't be here. That's not a very reliable plan.

[He's taking for granted that if it was an accident, they wouldn't have to come to find killers, so he's taking this as a most planned murder]

Mods?

[sharddrive]

Are we sure it was a plan?

[You know what, sure, he'll look over at Davy.]

So do we still have to do this whole show if it was some kind of accident?

[oceangirlfriend]

It is one possible location. But the skin wasn't broken, so it'd be hard to find evidence of where she hit her neck exactly.

[sharddrive]

H-uh. Was there anything she could've slipped on?

[oceangirlfriend]

I think Freyja might have noticed something on the edge of the pool? I didn't get a chance to take a closer look myself there.

[magycks]

What, like she was running about near the pool and slipped? We've got to put up a sign or something.

[sharddrive]

At the very least.

[ignobel]

[She's been getting kind of distracted by the literal ghost ship hanging out with them, when they were talking about ghost ships she kind of forgot about other ships navigating(??) these waters(??). How is that thing even staying afloat.

There's a clearing of the throat as she refocuses. Right. She's somewhere between a duck and a murder place right now.]

Can't see how anyone'd break her neck directly without... you know, leaving some kinda trace... [morbid as that is, she manages to be a bit thoughtful if hesitant about it] Was there a lot of water splashed out of the pool or something?

[oceangirlfriend]

I think she was probably dropped in the pool afterwards. Even if she broke her neck on the edge there, that wouldn't necessarily have ended with her entire body in the pool.

[ignobel]

Right, right, but if we think she slipped around the pool, there'd have to be something for her to slip on. I don't think it was the banana peel...

[So like, first thought is water, second thought... hard to say. Timelines are hard when you're scrambling to put together mass murder with murder with a murder cherry on top.]

[conceivesfrenzy]

I mean, if there was water around the edge of the pool, then she could've slipped on that, right?

[ahelpingpaw]

It'd be hard to make a murder trap with water, right? Nothing would guarantee she'd slip on that.

[He's seriously working with the assumption every single part of this case was carefully planned by a ruthless murderer]

[ignobel]

If she got pushed or something else hit her that wouldn't leave a mark but that'd disorient her... There's ways to trap people if you try hard enough.

Sounds like our killer tried hard enough.

[Like, the more details come out... looks at the buffet table...]

[deathmagnetic]

There was a bruise on her chest. Depending on when she was struck there, it could've started the momentum towards her being thrown off-balance. It wouldn't have even needed to necessarily be a hard hit.

[ignobel]

Would have helped to get a look at the bruise, I guess.

[Looking at corpses ain't one of her hobbies but now they need information to not die so I guess it's a hobby now. Or would be if they weren't stuck down here. F.]

You think it could have been the railing, too...? Hard to say where she actually died...

[deathmagnetic]

I'm sure the railing was involved at some point.

I present one possibility as to how:

Her killer struck her on the chest, and she lost her balance, stumbling over the railing. Depending on how quick she acted, her own ability, and how she fell over the railing, it's also possible she could've grabbed onto it. But, then Carmen's killer could've had the opportunity to lightly jostle the railing, which would cause her to completely fall over. In doing this, they managed to leave those 'scratches' behind.

Following that, the 'where' would logically be after she was tossed back on board. If we're going with the theory she broke her neck on her being thrown back onto the ship, that is.

[jibunwo]

In which case, should that be the progression of events, fault would by these rules be laid upon the one who put her in the initial circumstances, and not the sea creature which threw her back.

It does little to explain the mess in the buffet, unless the strike was the result of a fight having spilled out from there to the deck.

[ignobel]

I mean, I could see it. But I'm not seeing where 'lightly jostling the railing' and 'leaving weird scratches' lines up?

[onlyyoucan]

Do you think it was the water? The puddles that were mentioned earlier.

[ignobel]

I mean, I don't know, wouldn't there be trails or something...

[magycks]

Well, there's always the option that whoever killed her just beat her without breaking the skin, right? Didn't see the corpse up close myself, so I can't say for sure.

[ignobel]

Was it just that the skin wasn't broken, or was her neck just, like -- not showing any signs of being strangled or anything?

[Man, she's kind of glad she didn't have to stare at the corpse for that. Yikes.]