SEVENTH TRIAL

[bathymetric]

[ After a while, Davy Jones comes and collects you all again. It's a much quicker trip than he's ever had to take for you all before. You all fit so easily into the elevator in the theatre now, don't you?

As he plays the song that takes you down, even Jones seems tired. But the elevator certainly isn't, moving just as dramatically into the depths of the ship as it ever has. You now know all the floors it passes on its trip down to the trial room, don't you?

And none of you even know that this is your last ride down. The end is coming. But that's for later, and not quite yet for all of you.

The crew of the Dutchman is... different, somehow, this week. There are more figures aboard, and they're all singing, well. Maybe Scott was right, that first week. ]

Ye know what to do, passengers.

[ Jones moves to the wall to look out at his ship, scowling.

The podiums are waiting.

Welcome to your seventh trial.

Comments

[sivard]

There was something strange going on in that water around the garden.

There were some puddles near the edge, which I know isn't that strange, really, but something was dragged away from it.

[ahelpingpaw]

So if Jasper's hair was wet, could he have been drowned or something?

[He didn't see the body, he has no idea if it showed signs of drowning]

[scythegun]

I think that's possible, ja. His hair was certainly wet at some point, only to be quickly dried... And considering just how heavy his armor is, I doubt he'd be able to swim if he was pushed in.

[sivard]

Maybe?

He did always wear that heavy armor.

[magycks]

And he was wearing it all the time last week. An absolute death trap, if you ask me.

[jibunwo]

...Ah. I see, that makes much more sense.

If he was already dead when he was in the chair, then slitting his throat wouldn't have caused him to bleed. That's why our culprit opted to run off and make fake blood.

[sivard]

But why go to the trouble? If they shoved him into the water and he couldn't get out...

[scythegun]

The more chaotic things become, the harder it is for us to solve, ja? I suspect they threw this much out there to give us more to be confused by.

[jibunwo]

True, it might have been easier to make something like that resemble an accident. I can't understand why that specific course of action just yet, but my immediate assumption is just to make the incident harder to solve.

[sivard]

...You and Yeager are probably right.

Still, it seems kinda strange to me. You'd think making it look like he drowned himself would be the ticket out of this place.

[jibunwo]

I agree with you--it would be much less trouble than dragging a man in full armor around. And speaking of that, it's potentially likely we're looking at the physically stronger of our limited numbers.

[scythegun]

[...okay he knows this looks bad given the massive scythe he's carrying, but—]

Considering just how heavy that armor is, I'm honestly not sure how many of us actually could have moved him. Much less fished him out from the water.

[jibunwo]

Are you implying that he might still have been alive rather than having drowned, in that case?

[ahelpingpaw]

Well, uh...I dunno much about how waterproof the armor is? But he had been thrown inside maybe the clothes and stuff would have been wet. Maybe instead he was brought there when he was already dead and then just...got his head underwater for a moment, enough to get his head wet?

[In which case he didn't drown, really]

If he was alive it must have been tough to hold someone who probably would be struggling all the time.

[scythegun]

No. I think what we've discussed makes the most sense. Data seems like the only one who would be able to retrieve Jasper from underwater and move him about so, but Data was knocked out. So either Data did all of this and knocked himself out somehow, or... well, perhaps someone's secretly much stronger than they look. Maybe it's another case of possession.

[Not exactly a satisfying answer, but now he's just glancing over in Davy Jones' direction...]

[ltcommandroid]

I would have been able to do that - although I believe I could also have simply lifted him and avoided the damage to his armor and clothing.

[scythegun]

Ja, precisely. It doesn't really make sense.

[ahelpingpaw]

If...nobody else could have gotten Jasper from underwater then that only leaves that he was alive in that moment and got outta there by himself, right?

[Sure would be the last possible option, in which case that answers...not much and opens a few questions more]

[scythegun]

If he wasn't entirely submerged then moving him would certainly be easier... but moving him would be a bit difficult. If he was alive and moved himself down there then ja, it would be easier for any of us to have done this. But I'm not sure if that really lines up with what we have... Though I suppose he could have fallen down a flight of steps on his way downstairs.

[sivard]

These clues really aren't fitting together, are they?

We're missing something.

[magycks]

... Ah, that's right. Sweet, open, trusting Filbo. You've gotta stop taking people's word on these things.

[scouserer]

It's harder to make it look like someone's drowned themselves, though--there's a lot more specific symptoms overall. Things like...mucus leaking out of their nose post-mortem, water in the lungs, so on and so forth. But I assume a lot of these would be hard to check for, given none of us are coroners.

[sivard]

I don't know... I think it's kind of strange he wasn't just left in the water. It's a lot less work than concocting this whole scenario of framing three different people, isn't it?

[scouserer]

[Constantine nods slowly.]

But perhaps that's exactly why they didn't leave him there--just to muddle things up and make things more confused.

[scythegun]

Considering the "poison" symptoms around his nose and mouth, it certainly could have been done to disguise drowning. I'm hardly an expert when it comes to that.

[why couldn't jasper have been killed by a weapon...... that's his area of expertise!!!]