FIRST TRIAL

[bathymetric]

Alright, that seems like more than enough time to poke around the crime scene. Gather at the vault door, won’t you? It seems that for many of you it will be a short walk.

[ Once you’re all gathered at the vault door, Angel meets you there and quietly taps a keycard to the side of it. There’s an enormous whirring and grinding from inside as various mechanisms within the door move and whir - until with one last shuddering thud, the door starts to swing inwards, revealing a fully-glass tunnel leading off the side of the plateau the base is built on. Small lights built into the floor illuminate as you walk forward, until finally they light up an enormous elevator, perfectly capable of holding the twenty-four of you.

Angel comes too, putting a few numbers into a keypad just outside the door and inserting her card key once everyone is inside. She’ll gestures to get in if anyone seems unsure, but doesn’t really speak or enter the car herself. ]

Going down.

[ And down the elevator goes, leaving the lights of the facility behind - from here everyone can even see some parts of the facility you don’t have access to, it’s bigger than you realized. But it’s a long and uncomfortable ride to the depths, at least a minute or two before the elevator stops.

When the doors open, enough lights flash on to show that you’ve reached the ocean floor, some distance below even the depths you knew before. Lights around the outside of the massive glass dome you've found yourselves in illuminate the barren depths of the sea, with little if any ocean life to currently disrupt it.

At the top of the dome, among the lights, is an outward-facing circle of five or six different screens, each showing the telltale spiral that indicates The Professor is as present as he ever is.

Below them, of course, are the podiums, a circle of simple metal stands with some kind of video screen embedded into each, though they’re turned off for now. Each of your names is carved into one of them, though the podium constructed for Aela seems to have been just set to display a blank red light.

The screens lower down until they’re too close to eye level for anyone’s comfort. ]

Welcome to the trial room. You have as long as you need to discover who among you killed The Huntress. Once you have, I will explain further action. Take your places.

[ The screens rise back up - welcome to your first trial. ]

Comments

[archboxer]

[Of course the Professor had prepared just in case someone did break, as he knew they would. Great.]

Thank you, Mira and Ema. That was a good move. For those who did not go into the library, it had been greatly disturbed.

It looked like someone had started throwing books. There was even one that did not belong to the original collection.

[She has The Lusty Argonian Maid with her sitting on her podium. She... might have read through it briefly. Who would want such a poorly written book?]

[emberserker]

Either she did it to fend off her attacker, or her attacker did it to throw her off, but the former's more likely. Then again, she was supposedly a great hunter and killed all those creatures on her profile, so this seems a bit amateurish, doesn't it?

[drladysounds]

Could she have hesitated while fighting? To avoid killing a person?

[emberserker]

That's possible. A person might be another thing to most people.

[archboxer]

I would not be so sure... she seemed rather impressed by my boxing. I feel that she might have been able to do well with her fists without the books. The latter could be a possibility as well.

[emberserker]

Perhaps. What do you know about Aela's capabilities, then?

[archboxer]

I did not spar with her but she seemed be part of a mercenary group as well as being a great huntress. The Companions I believe? Fighting another person would have fallen into that category.

That said... [She coughs, raising the dirty lizard book.] Does anyone recognize this?

[lovelikeyou]

She told me once that that was why she was up at night so much. She was used to having her shield-brothers around when she slept.

[She must not have felt safe resting without them. But look at what happened.]

I got several books out of the machine, but I don't think that was one of them.

[onefuture]

...Well, whatever it is, it looks raunchy to the point of excess.

[Like holy shit, who reads this garbage.]

[lovelikeyou]

[onefuture]

I agree. Aela had a deep love for fighting; she wouldn't have resorted to such a tactic, should other methods have been available to her.

[philoxenia]

She was a great hunter, but... could it have been she was taken off-guard? Or... maybe it was someone she didn't want to harm for whatever reason.

[emberserker]

That's true, but she admitted herself that it was dangerous to be out at night, even if she did it constantly.

[philoxenia]

....

[ She frowns. ]

That's true. It... might have been that she didn't want to hurt whoever the other person was, then.

[fivestagegod]

...Aela doesn't seem the sort to resort to that, unless she was disarmed somehow. She was carrying one of those knives earlier in the week; I don't see why she wouldn't have faced an assailant directly. She was very proud of her combat ability and all.

[emberserker]

Unless it was just a distraction or something of the like, that's true...

[blackmass]

I wonder, is it not possible she was the one being fended off?

[philoxenia]

... I could be wrong, but... she strikes me as the honorable type. Not the kind of person who'd sneak attack another person, especially if it meant it would kill them.

[bolderfell]

Okay. But what if someone attacked her, realized they bit off more than they could chew, and then tried to make a run for it? She's a hunter. She wouldn't let them go.

[philoxenia]

That... could be a possibility.

... What strikes me most is her broken wrist... I'm not sure that's something someone can do by accident, is it? Then again, I don't know much about injuries, or fighting...

[blackmass]

If you insist, but let us not forget the incentive to all this. We have no way of knowing if her secret was one she deemed worth killing for.

[philoxenia]

... That's true.

[ she hates it but also: fair ]

[obstagoodboy]

A book that didn't belong? Maybe from that reward machine?

[emberserker]

Don't tell me it's another one of those religious texts with the ridiculous stories appended at the end.

[obstagoodboy]

Wouldn't know. But if it doesn't fit might've been something her or the killer was reading before things went down.