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

summoning Davy Jones, paging Monsieur Jones

[ignobel]

[She's turning around even before Yeager's done talking so she's fine with getting to yell, sure.]

Yo, big guy! If somebody shoved Carmen off the ship and then she got killed getting thrown back up, would that count as the monster killing her or the person shoving killing her?

It's so complicated...

[scythegun]

[tell 'em, naegi allenby!!]

[thekeyofsea]

The monster cannot be held at fault for any deaths.

[leaveittomother]

So it would be considered a weapon in that case.

[thekeyofsea]

Aye. She would bear no fault even if someone found a way to use her as such.

[ damn he sounds uncharacteristically soft abt that monster ]

[cethflayn]

[Oh aw

Now Flayn really wants to meet the tentacle friend]

[sharddrive]

...Is the kraken your girlfriend, Davy.

[He's not judging, he's just a little morbidly curious about the physical logistics involved.]

[hypnowhip]

[Oh my god.]

Shard, darling. Please learn to read the scene better.

[sharddrive]

It seemed like a reasonable question.

[thekeyofsea]

[ Oh good, time for some Davy Jones Anger. ]

Nay, Master Shard, she is not.

[sharddrive]

I'm just saying, you've both got the tentacley thing going on! Sometimes like attracts like, that's all I'm saying.

[ltcommandroid]

It is generally considered inappropriate to suggest that people would be romantically involved with their pets.

[thanks....? he says it like, hey, fyi]

Humans more commonly draw parallels to a parent-child relationship, although of course Mr. Jones is not a human.

[sharddrive]

I wasn't sure if it was a pet or a big tentacley person!

[leaveittomother]

She, then. My mistake.

[She actually... sounds sorry for that? For once? Even monsters have feelings and rights.]

[oceangirlfriend]

[D'awwwww. Okay despite this being a murder trial that's kinda sweet to hear.]

[conceivesfrenzy]

... Interesting.

[ THINKING A WHOLE LOT ]

[ignobel]

So then the monster wasn't involved, or, you're just saying the monster was involved but... huh?

[She doesn't have enough tentacles to count the scenarios in this. Huffs.....]

Really don't get the point of this.

[sivard]

I think he's sayin' if the monster was involved, it's on the person who tossed her overboard in the first place.

[onlyyoucan]

Like if someone set a trap, it's their fault when it goes off.

[Somewhere in Orsterra, an angry redhead feels called out.]

[ignobel]

I'm really no good at figuring out what these people are saying when they start talking in circles like this. Thanks.

[She appreciates the translation for the legalese. (It's not legalese but close enough!!!!)]

[thekeyofsea]

I am giving you no details of the death, Miss Beardsley. Merely stating the terms of culpability. By the terms of engagement, someone here was responsible for this death.

[ignobel]

Yeah, I get that you're trying real hard to have us do stuff you guys probably already know.

[You get the grumbling even though it's not necessarily your fault, look, they're under threat of mass not-flamethrowers here and she's a little salty about it.]

Can you at least tell us if your gal would throw coats back up same way she does people?