[EVENT] MYSTERY GAMES

[ironwood]

Hello, Chelonauts, and welcome to Keeliai’s fortnight of mayhem and mystery! To account for the delay, the event will ICly run from 15th to 29th of August, with the final party/awards log posted on the 31th.

The list of characters who signed up, which teams they’re in and which crimes they’ll be assigned, are as follows.

Crime #1: Abduction
China Sorrows
Midii Une
Zelgadis
Hiro Hamada

Crime #2: Theft
Jack Frost
Raine Sage
Pepper Potts
Klaus Reinherz

Crime #3: Murder
Aya
Gene Khan
Valdis
Arno Dorian

As the games are sponsored by the Merchant’s Guild, IC sign-ups sheets will have been available at specific storefronts all across Keeliai. Feel free to assume your character applied at one such branch. Keep in mind, however, that these games are Keeliai wide. Not only Foreigners are playing -- there are as many as a dozen ‘crimes’ occurring at any given time, and kedanese teams will be pursuing your crimes as well!

In the body of the post just below is an IC overview of each crime, but the clues and ‘scripts’ will be in threads in this post. Be sure to track your team’s thread, since OOC crime updates will be posted on the 19th and 25th. These threads will also be where team plotting can occur!

A log for all IC murder-related threading will be posted on the 15th.


Crime #1: The Case of the Mother’s Empty Nest
The first crime is an abduction! The IC information given to the team is as follows. OOC information will be given in the Crime #1 thread here.

Congratulations! The crime your team has been selected to solve is The Case of the Mother's Empty Nest. Your contact will be the distraught mother Mesul (when she remembers that she's supposed to be acting distraught) who will beg you to find her abducted daughter, Juhino. (She will make it a point of drawing the investigators aside and reassuring them that her daughter is indeed quite fine, because this is just a game and she and her daughter are participating together!)

But when she gets down to it, she will confidently relay that her daughter has been kidnapped, and their task is twofold: recover the girl, and find the culprit.

Crime #2: The Theft of the Smithy’s Prize
The second crime is a theft! The IC information given to the team is as follows. OOC information will be given in the Crime #2 thread here.

Congratulations! The crime your team has been selected to solve is The Theft of the Smithy’s Prize. Your clients are Xinhi and Oyora, a smithing-business couple whose long-term anniversary project has been snatched out of their shop. Although they won’t object to the culprit being apprehended, they are more concerned with the return of the project.

This project is a motorcycle, built by Xinhi using parts for which Oyora has traded, and represents their collective talents and interests. Your goal will be to recover the motorcycle in its entirety, with a bonus if your team also succeeds in apprehending the culprit!

The winner for this crime will be chosen on a points-basis, with points offered for speed, thoroughness and of course the bonus. Points will be deducted for undue damages in the pursuit of the case.

Crime #3: The Case of the Serpent’s Demise
The third crime is a good old-fashioned murder! The IC information given to the team is as follows. OOC information will be given in the Crime #3 thread here.

Congratulations! The crime your team has been selected to solve is the Case of the Serpent’s Demise. Your client is a low-level Snake named Lien, who will introduce himself as a member of the task force investigating Meisheng’s murder. He and the task force have specific instructions not to involve anyone else in the investigation because they’re trying not to announce the murder to the public at large until they have someone behind bars; this is why the average citizen of Keeliai will have no idea what you’re talking about if you ask them for details! Lien, however, has gone to your team for help because the investigation is at a standstill. He privately suspects that his superiors are trying to cover for whoever committed the foul deed.

It’s up to your team to try and find the killer. You will be competing against three other teams. The winning team will be the one who successfully accuses the real killer first. Please note that once your team makes an accusation, they cannot take it back, and if the accusation is wrong then your team will automatically be disqualified. We also take sportsmanship very seriously; if your team sabotages another team, that is also grounds for immediate disqualification.

Once your team is ready, Lien will be waiting for you in the back courtyard of the Snakes’ mansion!

Comments

CRIME #3: MURDER

[ironwood]

Each team will be given one small mystery-solving kit, containing rudimentary fingerprinting powder, a small magnifying glass, a code-breaking sheet, and two clear chemicals labelled ‘poison-detectors’ that are supposed to turn blue in the presence of poison.

‘Lien’ is a very serious actor determined to do his best; unless someone specifically asks him, he will treat Meisheng’s murder like it actually happened, and grow very annoyed if someone forces him to break character. Yunxu has allowed certain rooms in the mansion to be accessible to the competing teams for this mystery, but if your characters try to leave those rooms without explicit permission Lien will grow flustered and remind you that your presence in the mansion is supposed to be a secret! Further attempts to break game rules will result in immediate disqualification (and, depending on how far the rule-breakers go, Yunxu’s personal involvement.)

Lien will lead your characters to a small dining room off the lobby. The dining room will be empty except for one table, five chairs, and the marked outline of a body sprawled on the floor in the corner. The body itself, Lien will explain, was carted off by his superiors, and there’s no way for him to let your characters have access to it. All he can give you is the crime scene. The only other notable thing in the room is a small empty crystal glass sitting on the table.

There are a number of ways for your characters to proceed, any of which can lead them to secondary clues (revealed later):

• They can fingerprint the glass, and ask Lien to identify the fingerprints for them (it will take him a few days).
• They can test the glass for poison, but neither of the colourless liquids will turn blue.
• They can inspect the dining room with the magnifying glass, and discover traces of a fine black sand tracked into the spaces between floorboards. If someone, for some reason, decides to test the black sand for poison, they’ll find that only one of the two liquids turns blue, and Lien won’t be able to tell them why. They can follow up on how the chemicals work at Stark Industries if they’d like.
• They can ask Lien for updates on the investigation as it stands, and Lien will tell them there are three kedan who were seen in the vicinity of the dining room with reason to want Meisheng dead - a Snake, a maid, and one of Yunxu’s personal butlers. (The personal butlers have been made up for the sake of the Mystery Games.) But Lien won’t tell them names, mainly because he doesn’t actually know what the names are.
• Asking around other ‘NPCs’ in the mansion will net a few different results depending on how the characters approach the questioning. Being subtle will lead to the discovery that the crystal glass in the dining room is of a different model than the mansion’s usual fare, and a set of four were brought in by the personal butlers. Being more direct will lead to the discovery that the maid who services this part of the mansion is an absolutely terrible maid, and no one can fathom why she was hired - surely she must be the killer!
• Following up on the crystal glass’s origin will lead your characters to an empty glass blower’s studio a short five minute walk from the mansion, but the studio will be empty apart from the necessary manufacturing equipment.

CRIME #3: ADDITIONAL CLUES

[ironwood]

Please don't reply! This comment will be updated with further clues as the event progresses.

[ironwood]

There are several ways your characters can pinpoint the suspects, following logically from any of the initial options:

• If they asked Lien to fingerprint the glass, Lien will tell them there are only two peoples’ fingerprints on it; the personal butler and the maid. The fingerprint analysis process, however, will finally give them two names. The butler is called Yongnian, and the maid is called Rou.

• If the characters followed up at Stark Industries about the properties of the poison testing, they’ll discover that neither of the liquids they were given actually test for poison. If they confront Lien about this, Lien will tell them he got the liquids from the Snakes - revealing the name of their third suspect, a guard called Genghis.

• The personal butlers live in the mansion, in their own little sequestered quarters. (These are actually unused bedrooms, but for the purpose of the Mystery Games, personal paraphernalia like pictures and small statues have been put in the rooms.) The magnifying glass will reveal small traces of black sand in Yongnian’s bed, and using the same two chemicals as before will result in the same reaction as before - it’s definitely the same sand.

• By contrast to the butlers, the maids live apart from the mansion, though almost always within a one block radius. (This is certainly not true outside of the Games.) A little asking around will reveal Rou’s address, and the characters can go knock on her door. There are a couple of different ways to approach her, since a formal accusation of murder only counts if it’s made to Lien. Accusing Rou of the murder will make her burst into tears, and she’ll haltingly explain to the group that she didn’t murder anybody - she tricked her way into a maid position because she’s secretly stealing from the Snakes, and if Yunxu finds out, she’s dead. If on the other hand the characters approach her in a more subtle and compassionate way, she’ll admit to having followed Yongian home one day, and been utterly confused when his home turned out to be a glass blowers’ studio.

• If your characters decide to try and confront Yongnian, he will be mysteriously impossible to find.

• Genghis, on the other hand, is almost always on patrol just outside the lobby, and fairly easy to bump into. He’ll be tight-lipped no matter how your characters choose to approach him, but not out of stubbornness or spite. The more observant among the players might notice the fear in his eyes.

Once your characters have taken some or all of these methods, Lien will approach them and say he can’t let them run around the mansion for very much longer - he needs to know who did this, and he needs to know it now. At this point, your characters must formally accuse one of the three suspects (or, if they’re feeling ambitious, any one of the other NPCs involved in the Serpent’s Demise, though it will perplex the heck out of Lien.)

THE ANSWERS

[ironwood]

As it turns out, the accusation - if made correctly - doesn’t matter very much at all. Yongnian, the butler, was the one who killed Meisheng, but the reason he hasn’t been available to question during the investigation is because he’s already been brought to justice. A very Yunxu-style brand of justice. (One doesn’t just kill the head Snake’s second-in-command and expect to get away with it, after all.) Genghis, along with some of the other mansion guards, have been spearheading the effort to keep the true culprit a secret at Yunxu’s orders.

As for Yongnian’s motivation? They don’t know. If there was one, Lien hasn’t been able to discover what it is. Whatever Yongnian’s plans were, they died along with him.

As a final note, any attempt on the characters’ parts to explain to Lien that it was ‘the butler in the dining room with the candlestick wine glass’ will be met with utter confusion, both on Lien’s part and the part of his actor. Keeliai doesn’t have very many board games.

CRIME #3: TEAM PLOTTING

[ironwood]

Use this thread to plot among your team-members!

CRIME #3: TEAM PLOTTING

[redlightgreenlight]

I think that this one would be a good one to follow up on.

"They can inspect the dining room with the magnifying glass, and discover traces of a fine black sand tracked into the spaces between floorboards. If someone, for some reason, decides to test the black sand for poison, they’ll find that only one of the two liquids turns blue, and Lien won’t be able to tell them why. They can follow up on how the chemicals work at Stark Industries if they’d like."

[unetrustworthy]

Pretend I'm logged into Aya's account for this. (Current on my phone)

Aya would definitely be all about the science aspects. She can scan, analyze, memorize, and identify anything she's allowed to by the rules in the game

[redlightgreenlight]

Awesome!!!

[backwordscompatible]

...apparently, I'm logged into every account BUT Aya's.

So now it's a matter of figuring out tagging order and how to proceed from there.

[redlightgreenlight]

Maybe Aya first? Just to get it rolling? I'm not entirely certain how to start, otherwise I would.

[backwordscompatible]

I'm okay with that.

I'll be on my computer later tonight when I'm feeling better. If no one else does, I'll try to write out a starter tag to initiate everything.

[redlightgreenlight]

Sounds good. I hope you feel better. <3

[wrathfulkhan]

[redlightgreenlight]

Also...Yunxu did it...

after latest clues

[looksfine]

The Black Sand is the most interesting aspect to me, because if only ONE Of the liquids is turning blue in reaction to it...it's making me wonder if it's one of those special poisons that only becomes a poison if mixed with another component. Thus, by itself? Not poisonous. But if combined with its second deadly component.....

Of course, if the Black Sand is to blame, then that woulds certainly place a lot of suspicion on Yongnian.

...UNLESS his disappearance means that he's been poisoned too, but idk if that kind of twist would be introduced at this stage?!?!?

[redlightgreenlight]

It was Yunxu...