[EVENT] MYSTERY GAMES

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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

GENERAL QUESTIONS

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Please direct your questions here!

CRIME #1: ABDUCTION

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Your team will be sent to a small residence in the Wood Sector, and will meet with a woman named Mesul, who will give you all the information necessary to begin the investigation. Her daughter Juhino is 16 years old, and a student at the College, studying an offshoot of hybrid agriculture. Mesul went through a lot of effort to help her get into the College, so she's very proud of her daughter's accomplishments!

Mesul will relay that four days prior, Juhino neglected to arrive home after classes. In a Wood Sector alley, there were signs of a struggle, although the investigators will not be able to examine the scene directly, as it was part of the imagined setup of the crime. Mesul will, however, provide the team with the "findings" from the alley:

• One of Juhino's necklaces was discovered with the clasp broken, however no blood was found at the scene.
• Neighbours in the area who were questioned reported seeing a single figure lurking around the alleyway entrance, but the person could not be identified, due to wearing a hood.
• There was a hastily scribbled random note asking for 1000 juulan found at the scene, which is a fair amount of money, but not extravagant. The ransom was paid via a blind drop, but nothing was ever heard after that. The ransom note was written on high end stationary, which seems at odds with the really rough writing it showed.

There are two initial ‘suspects’: Juhino’s ex-boyfriend, Kellban, and her greatest rival at the College, Ildsina. Your team’s initial investigation should take the form of questioning these two and the people who knew them, which will reveal the following details.

Kellban is a few years older than Juhino, which Mesul will admit was a source of concern for her. He works in Earth Sector and has an alibi for the time of the kidnapping, but has curiously bought a kirin very recently -- which is strange, since he doesn’t need one for his work. He’s already paid for it in full, however, though he’s asked the stable to hold it for a few more days.

He will claim that he and Juhino broke off their relationship mutually and on good terms, and that he didn’t want to take away from her time at the College -- it’s so hard to get accepted, after all! That being said, he was looking forward to picking the relationship up in a few years, when she was older.

Ildsina is a young lady from a wealthy family, and one of Juhino’s classmates. Their school friends will report that these two were strong rivals. While Ildsina for into the College through familial connections and money, Juhino was selected on merit. The two were at the top of their classes, each vying for the same ranking, and though Ildsina isn’t quite Mean Girl territory, there has been a bit of attitude on her part regarding their rivalry. A lot of the talk after Juhino’s disappearance is about how, with Juhino missing just before a major exam, it’s almost a shoo-in that Ildsina will rank top of their class. She does have an alibi, but it’s from her family, and everyone knows tight family ties can be …

Ildsina herself will refuse questions without her parents present, and will deny any allegations that she was unfair or did anything untoward to Juhino. If anything, she’ll claim they were on fairly good terms lately, in spite of the upcoming exam.

CRIME #2: THEFT

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Your team is sent to Metal Sector, to a shop several blocks away from Stark Industries. Though small, the shop is well financed and well patroned, and owned by a woman named Xinhi with her wife Oyora. Xinhi is the smith, while Oyora is originally from Earth Sector and handles the business. Both of them are very solid people who don’t ‘act’ so much as approach the game and any clues given as if they’re extra tasks on their list of daily chores, with the unexpected side-effect of authenticity.

Xinhi has been building a motorcycle which has vanished. She can provide sketches and plans for it, while Oyora will provide copies of receipts and names of employees, of which there are two.

One of the employees, Lanza, claims that a customer has been in and out regularly under different guises, but recognisable because of a pale birthmark on her neck. He remembers she bought a set of basic tools on one visit, and some oilskin leather, and has a habit of being there right at closing, forcing those on staff to hold open the store until she’s done. Lanza will tell the team that this happened, with him as witness as the storekeeper, the night the motorcycle vanished.

The presence of this customer and her purchases can be confirmed through receipts, but tracking her down will be the next big task.

The customer with the birthmark can be pursued in any combination of the following ways.

• Talking Oroya can give a name from a custom order sheet, Nuzi, and an ‘address’ which will turn out to be the kedanese equivalent of a ‘postbox’.
• The box-keeper will recognise the description and be able to point the team in the direction Nuzi usually goes when she leaves.
• Canvassing the area where the box-keeper indicated will eventually hit on one of Nuzi’s neighbours, and the block where she lives.
• Asking other local store-owners about the customer with the birthmark will reveal that she is a regular in the area, frequently just to window-shop.
• Persistent canvassing will turn up a description of a uniform from one of the shopkeepers.
• Pursuing the uniform’s description will turn up with the area where Nuzi works, just over the border into Fire Sector. She’s part of a maintenance team which keeps track of the heatless fires in the sector’s ‘fountains’.

CRIME #3: MURDER

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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.