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

[fivestagegod]

I don't suppose anyone found a weapon on her person when checking her body over? She carried one of those knives.

[bolderfell]

All the time? It was always on her?

[fivestagegod]

I wouldn't know. But she doesn't exactly strike me as the sort to walk around at night completely unarmed, either. She knew better, so I don't see why she suddenly would decide to invite trouble for no reason last night.

[bolderfell]

The knife I found was in the bathroom. The one closer to the big door.

[bogwife]

Not that we found, no. Could she have been attacked with her own knife?

[ladygeryon]

Maybe her wrist was broken while they were fighting for control of that knife, then.

[fivestagegod]

That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Something happened, she pulled a knife, she got injured while they were fighting for it.

[bogwife]

That'd make sense... [She hums a little and chews her lower lip in thought.] It takes so much pressure to break wrist bones so whoever attacked her had to have been awfully strong themselves.

[ladygeryon]

Hmm...maybe it was smashed against a shelf or something like that? Though I'm not sure how you'd tell that apart from a bone broken by pure force.

[lovelikeyou]

...maybe there would be different bruises? I've seen a lot of human injuries before, but I never really studied them.

[There was no need; she'd see them, and heal them, and that was the end of it.]

[snackooed]

You're correct about that. The bruising would be different depending on the type of trauma...an expert would almost certainly be able to use the bruise itself and other associated abrasions to tell the difference.

[bogwife]

She did have other bruises on her body, all on her right side. She could have been thrown against something, like the wall or a bookshelf, and gotten the bruises and broken her wrist that way?

But again it'd take a lot of force. She didn't look like the type to bruise easily.