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

[magycks]

Well, it obviously wasn't a midnight snack, then. What sort of degenerate doesn't just peel as they go?

[jibunwo]

The kind who leaves whole bananas on the floor of the library.

[Absolute monsters.]

[magycks]

I mean, I guess someone needed the peel itself? But at least eat the evidence, in that case! Were they raised in a barn?

[scouserer]

.....

[He almost is afraid to suggest, but--]

Surely, she couldn't have broken her neck tripping on a goddamn banana peel.

1/2

[magycks]

[ she's trying so, so hard not to laugh ]

[magycks]

[ And it lasts for under two seconds! Pfffffffffffffft. ]

[deathmagnetic]

...We can't discount the possibility.

[ Saying that made it better, right. ]

[scouserer]

[It did not. Thank you anyways, Risotto.]

[deathmagnetic]

[ it's a pleasure ]

[queceracera]

This isn't even that kind of game! We're not racing.

[Scott says this with the confidence it makes sense. It does not.]

[sharddrive]

...What?

[what]

[hellahighwater]

[ After a few seconds, Chloe groans. ]

Dude, not everyone's got video games, you can't just say shit like that without explaining. Mario Kart ain't universal!!

[sharddrive]

...if that's what actually happened I'm giving up. But- slipped on a peel, fell into the pool, cracked her neck on the way down?

[It's. Not IMPOSSIBLE, probably.]

[scouserer]

Wouldn't there be evidence of the impact, if that was the case? Like, broken skin, blood on the tiles...so on and so forth.

[sharddrive]

Maybe? We know she didn't break skin when it happened, though.

[cethflayn]

Would that not depend on the condition of the banana peel?

[What sort of comedy is this]

[sharddrive]

Would it? She didn't look that heavy.

[ignobel]

She didn't seem like the kind of woman to slip on a banana peel. I'd be really surprised?

[Okay but seriously, she can't picture this.]

[sharddrive]

I didn't know her that well, but I don't think it takes a "type" to slip on something or not. Especially if there was already some kind of fight or chase going on.

[dokkalfheimr]

There was a peel by the pool.

[Hello, Freyja.]

However, I find it unlikely that that's what happened. The peel seemed entirely intact; I doubt it would have seemed so if someone had slipped on it in some way...? And besides, that accounts for none of our other evidence. The injuries to the body, the damage to her clothes, the evidence that implies some sort of fight... Something simple like that wouldn't account for any of that.

[ahelpingpaw]

I dunno how murders are supposed to go because I don't really...watch many mysteries like those, but planting evidence seems like a necessary step. Maybe that banana peel is just fake proof.

[sivard]

It seems like a strange thing to plant to throw us off, doesn't it?

[He's not sure what else it could have been, though.]

[oceangirlfriend]

Combined with the fact that the banana hadn't browned, that definitely puts it down as a red herring. [A pause.] I suppose we could rule out the people who aren't familiar with that sort of gag, at least.

[calx]

It is possible but...given the other evidence I find it highly unlikely. The buffet area had evidence of a fight, while the other areas did not. Juice would likely leave a trail if they had moved on from the confrontation there.

Establishing a sequence of events should be one of our next steps.

[scouserer]

Agreed. And since there was evidence of footprints leading from the deck to the party room....