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

[lovelikeyou]

But by the time they were in a library, it wasn't a surprise.

[blackmass]

If we are to theorize that the killer was able to get behind her, might I theorize the concept of two assailants? If such positioning should be fact, then I fail to understand how a skilled hunter would allow an attacker such an advantage unless she were distracted.

[lovelikeyou]

Only one person could land that killing blow. The other, if there was one...they wouldn't have any reason to cooperate now.

[Someone might have done it if they thought the experiment ending meant everyone went home, but now, wouldn't a co-conspirator just die with the rest?]

[bolderfell]

...Yeah. Library's not a bad place to lay an ambush. Even then... the profiles said she's a damn good hunter. She'd know how to fight in a tight spot like that. If she was distracted or taken by surprise, it must've been a trick she hadn't seen before.

[philoxenia]

An unexpected trick... and an unexpected person--or people--maybe.

[bolderfell]

Anyone know what kind of beasts she usually hunted? No one else was from her world, right?

[philoxenia]

She told me a little bit... She specifically mentioned bears, trolls, and dragons, but her trial for the Companions involved hunting everything in the woods where she grew up.

[bolderfell]

So... living things, mostly. Not undead.

[...]

Some of the Ambling Bones I've come across in my travels... could throw detached parts of themselves to attack.

[philoxenia]

[ what the fuck ]

It... might be possible that she never faced anything like that.

[bolderfell]

They'd be kind of pointless to hunt, since it's not like there's any meat on them. I ran into them in abandoned catacombs and the like, not out in the woods.

[philoxenia]

The Companions--they took on requests, given enough payment. It's a possibility she might have taken on a request to clear out undead, but... without asking her, we can't be sure.

[ this suuuuuuuuuucks ]

[bogwife]

They throw parts of themselves? They don't just use swords and bows? [Damn, and she thought her neck of the woods was rough.]

[bolderfell]

They can. But if they didn't die holding a weapon, I guess an arm bone will do as a club.

[bogwife]

I suppose but that just seems awfully inconvenient for both of you. The skeletons in my bog tend to just claw and gouge if they can't find a weapon to use.

[bolderfell]

[Shrug!] Maybe they reattach it if it doesn't work. I wouldn't know. We didn't typically leave them be to attack us again.

[bogwife]

Obviously not, that'd just be silly. But what about- [Zaza. Zaza, you're hyper focusing.] Nevermind. Not important right now! If we survive this, I'll ask you more about your skeletons then.

[bolderfell]

Sure. Don't know how much I can tell you, though. I'm not the scholar.

[bogwife]

Practical information is just as good as scholarly! Better in this case if you ask me.

[emberserker]

Oh, that's disgusting.

[bolderfell]

They were usually well past the point of rotting, at least.