week 4 - trial

[productions]

week four trial



[At 9 AM precisely, the old grandfather clock chimes once again, and the doors to the drawing room are opened. They will remain open until everyone has come inside, after which they will shut behind them. It is not possible to leave on your own, although perhaps if you have a specific purpose the hostess will allow you to go, as long as you are accompanied by a partner.

The room is set up comfortably, with several tables by the fireplace set out to assist with the trial. The Hostess will also remain in a seat near the fireplace, next to the scales on the mantle. At lunch, the doors will open to bring in a large meal on an automatically rolling buffet, and at 3 PM, tea and finger sandwiches will be served. You'll be able to enjoy the trial in comfort, of course, but the information cards set out on tables will not allow you to forget your true purpose here.

At 7 PM, the trial will adjourn for the day. Players will be escorted by the Hostess to the ballroom, where dinner and wine will be served until 10 PM, at which point players will be required to return to their wings in groups with their wingmates and will be locked in their bedrooms until 8:30 AM the following morning.]

victim



suspects



Character Statuses
Setting
Manor Rules
Cheat Sheet
Voting

Comments

Autopsy

[productions]

The following document will be laid out on a table in the drawing room:

Autopsy Report - Rin Kagamine

Cause of Death - Fatal torso wound.

Location of Body - Music room, found lying on floor.

Time of Death - Between 3PM and 3:30PM.

Condition of Body - Rapier sword through her chest. Lying between piano and door to the hallway. No blood, but a metallic scent from her body. The wound area was smoking slightly, and the skin around the wound was warped.

Condition of Scene - Signs of a struggle. Piano bench moved to the side, and sheet music on the floor. Dust disturbed into the air. Doorway to Sapphire wing was closed, doorway to the hallway was open.

There is room at the bottom of the page for others to add notes. Rin's information card is laid out next to it.

[terriblesister]

The sword was through her front; we found her on her side facing the hallway door.

-Yuzu

Suspects

[productions]

On another table, the information cards of the suspects are laid out. There is a blank sheet of paper below each card, labeled:

Whereabouts - Wednesday, Week 4

[godwhisperer]

6:00 AM - Awoke from slumber and tended to the requirements of the Dark Gods.
6:30 AM - Broke fast in the ballroom.
7:00 AM - In the gardens, harvesting the seed of the wicked orange orb.
8:00 AM - I cannot reveal my whereabouts nor actions at this time, for the secrets to be revealed are not for mortal eyes.
10:30 AM - Sojourned in Topaz wing with reading material.
11:30 AM - Communing with forces of darkness.
12:15 PM - Attended the midday feast in the ballroom.
1:00 PM - Surveyed the grounds in the company of the Dread Queen of Calamity. Conducted ritual along the haunted shore.
3:00 PM - Returned from the gates of hell through the courtyard door.
3:10 PM - Retired in Topaz wing.

Findings

[productions]

Finally, one table is nearly empty. There are 10 boxes labeled Exhibit A through Exhibit J, as well as paper and pens for writing. The boxes are empty.

Exhibit: Some Weird Box with like Chemicals and Junk I found in the Piano Bench Top Thingy

[notyetlost]

[Poland puts down the small crappy cardboard box he found in the Piano Bench. The bottom is still dusty and the box is mostly empty aside from a stoppered beaker filled with a clear liquid that smells kind of like bleach and an unlabeled bottle also filled with a clear liquid that smells something like rubbing alcohol. The box looks like it could hold more stuff, but that's all Poland found in it.]

Theories

[productions]

This week, there is now a very large board in the center of the room, with pins to attach sheets of paper to. Particular theories about how a certain part of the crime could have been accomplished, a certain person's alibi, motives, or any other aspect of the crime you believe your character can explain should be written up and posted here.

(Please do not thread in this subheading; you can link to threads for discussion and we encourage you to do so. This is just to provide a handy trial recap for players who are jumping in.)

The Trial So Far

[productions]

DAY 1

Once again, the contestants are ushered into the drawing room at 9AM Thursday morning. This trial, they will be investigating the death of Rin Kagamine.

Upon everyone's arrival in the drawing room, the doors are shut and the week's suspects are revealed. This week, the suspects will be Gundam Tanaka, Kanaya Maryam, Sonia Nevermind, Susan Sto Helit, and Touko Aozaki.

The trial started off by examining the alibis of the suspects. Susan pointed out that she sensed Rin was alive in the music room at 3:00 PM, but could no longer sense her presence at 3:15 PM, suggesting the time of death was that 15 minute window. After Gundam was made to clarify his whereabouts, a pattern became clear. With the exception of Touko Aozaki, who was outside at the time, every suspect was accounted for. Sonia and Gundam were together until 3:10 and seen entering the foyer at 3:00. Kanaya was in the kitchen with Kaoru and didn't step out except to get some china. Susan was in the courtyard with Yuzu.

The trial continued to follow the standard procedure, with room searches undertaken. Beat investigates Kanaya's room and Sonia's room and updates his findings. Stiles investigates Susan and Gundam's rooms and updates his findings. Alice investigates Touko and Rin's rooms, and updates her findings. Alice also undertakes an effort to crack Rin's laptop in hopes of finding useful information.

Meanwhile, there's some discussion about the discovery of the body. Yuzu points out that the discovery bells tolled too early - only she and Poland were on the scene, while the rules indicate three people are needed. The possibility of an accomplice is raised, and it is noted the rules state an accomplice is always among the suspects. There is some resistance to this theory, however. Sonia insists that while the accomplice theory makes she and Gundam look guilty, that isn't what happened. Susan admits it does seem a little too obvious, and Stiles argues it would be a lot of risk for little gain to be an accomplice, though Kanaya says it might be possible for the incentive, being an item, to be shared. Latvia and Touko suggest someone could have happened on the body without knowing what they were seeing, but Yuzu thinks it wouldn't have counted unless they'd seen she was dead.

Poland brings up the box found at the scene. Since Rin was deadweight and only one deadweight item, the rapier, was recovered, some suggest this could be the set of poisons or the mystery box. Still, Rin is immune to poison, and Stiles argues that would be a pretty lame mystery box, and there wouldn't be any clear reason to bring it to the scene. Kanaya suggests the chemicals in the mystery box could be why Rin's wound was smoking, but Poland thinks that was just because she was a robot. Kanaya suggests a smoke bomb or taser was used, but Poland doesn't see much merit to that theory. Susan suggests the contents could have been used to drain leakage from the body. Touko doesn't see why anyone would pick a mystery box at all, but Poland seems to differ. May and Touko discuss the mystery box and believe it may be a "red trout."

Investigations are underway. Poland and Kaoru start to investigate the drawing room, but nothing stands out. Latvia inspects the mysterious box, while Touko gets to examining the body and rapier. Susan suggests the actual murder weapon could have been a heated poker. Latvia suggests maybe a third person arranged the scene, but Susan can't see how unless they were an accomplice, as they wouldn't have access to the sword.

As the first day drags into the afternoon, Poland sums up "weirdness" so far: the box itself and that it was left at the scene, that the weapon was left behind instead of hidden, that the crime scene wasn't cleaned and the door was left open where Susan could notice the disappearance, and that the clock chimed one person too early, indicating someone else besides the culprit was there before the discovery.

A bombshell was then dropped when Annie revealed belatedly that she was the person who stumbled on the body, and blowing most theories about the series of events of discovery out of the water.

Poland performs experiments and determines that a hot poker would explain the warped skin on Rin's body, and a poker is nearly consistent with the wound, at least more consistent than a rapier would be. Felicia wonders why they would bother disguising that they used a poker, and further suggests the sloppiness of the scene may be intention - the mystery box a red herring, and the choice of location with door open intended to set in stone the time of death. Susan agrees, and the two discuss how someone with an alibi for the window of the murder could have accomplished it.

Meanwhile, Sonia suggests everyone re-examine the list of deadweight items, considering the mystery box was a ruse and an item besides a sword would have been obtained. Spain and Felicia discuss the possibility of a skeleton key used to hide the poker in one of the now empty rooms, but the group settles on a theory that the secret passageway map was used.

At this point, Felicia drops a bombshell that several players had discovered a different secret room weeks earlier, and the trial gets distracted arguing about the decision to keep it secret.

The trial gets back on track through investigation. Poland discovers that the beakers in the chemistry area look very similar to the one in the mystery box, as do the dusty cardboard boxes in the pantry. Stiles has everyone explain their incentives, but nothing particularly new is elucidated.

At this point, Sonia, Felicia, and Clyde went to investigate the music room. The three discovered that, when playing several bars of music on the piano and then turning the bust of Mozart, a doorway will open behind the cabinet where the busts are kept. The doorway becomes a dusty stairwell, which descends down into the parlor and comes out again through the cabinet down there. The three also found a poker and a blank scrap of paper in the passage.

The three hurry back, and Sonia dramatically presents their findings to the group, just as the clock chimes, signaling the end of the first day.

DAY 2

The second day of the trial began with Alice summarizing the events as known. There was a little remaining debate over which alibis were still in tact, now that it was known the killer must have started from the ground floor. Susan's alibi in the courtyard with Yuzu seemed solid, as did Sonia's claim she went to the library, where Lithuania confirmed she was seen at 3:15. Although Touko was seen on the grounds, no one could confirm she didn't move elsewhere, so she was up in the air. Gundam's alibi was questioned as Sonia might have been generous with her time estimates on his behalf, but Sonia objected. Finally, Gundam logically objected that he could not cast spells on an iron poker, which Susan generously interpreted to mean there would not have been time for Gundam to start a fire unless Sonia was covering for him for a much longer period. Besides, neither Gundam or Sonia could have committed the crime, because Gundam would have chosen Susan to kill, and Sonia Jay Chou.

New suspicion about Kanaya was raised when Kaoru said Kanaya actually stepped out of the kitchen for five to ten minutes. This was even more time than Edward Cullen would have needed to make Bella his Queen of the Enrapturing Night. The trial somehow derailed for a little while at this point, as the wonderful tale of Mr. Cullen was shared. But as Felicia pointed out, the most likely culprits had been narrowed down to Kanaya and Touko.

Alice also took the morning to reveal the contents of Rin's computer. Susan was affronted to learn Rin was plotting against her, but in all fairness, as Poland pointed out, Susan is hogging the immunity and kind of a sourpuss to boot. So is there anything to Rin's claim that the Mastermind is one of the current players? The plot thickens...

On the other hand, Stiles, Alice, and Susan wondered if Rin couldn't be rebuilt. Susan's technical proficiency notwithstanding, no one determined whether R2D2 had a soul.

Latvia then chose to distract everyone from this important debate by bothering everybody with "evidence" to catch the "murderer." He pointed out Beat had said Kanaya had dirty gloves, which could have meant she moved one of the boxes in the basement. Beat corrected him that the gloves were dirty with soot, not dust. Kanaya claimed the soot was actually graphite from her drawing pencils.

Felicia checked the poker and found it did have soot on it, and then she and Latvia went with Kanaya to look at her room. Kanaya's gloves did appear to have soot on them, and no one was buying Kanaya's protests about graphite, not even Kanaya herself..

As the trial draws into the afternoon of the second day, Felicia makes an accusation, and Poland makes another one.

Hostess

[productions]

[Once everyone has been ushered into the drawing room, the doors shut and lock behind them, and the smoking room doors open. The Hostess emerges out of them, wearing a long yellow gown with a black fur coat. As always, a dark veil obscures her face.]

Good morning, my lovelies. I think by now we all know how this works. I wish you the best of luck, and please let me know if there's anything at all I can do to help!

[terriblesister]

Has there been a change in the rules about the body discovery alarm?

[allice]

[Taking a look at Gundam's alibi and...yeah...]

...Ok.

One: you can't just say you don't want to tell us what you were doing at 8am. "Mortal eyes" or not, you're a suspect.

Two: Who exactly is "Dread Queen of Calamity"?

[godwhisperer]

[He crosses his arms across his chest.]

Then execute me if you must. I will not be blackmailed.

[pandacea]

E-eh? What's with this suspect list? It's ridiculous! There's no way Mr. Gundam or Miss Susan or Miss Sonia killed anyone!

[teenspirit]

We most certainly did not!

[inthebones]

[a glance towards Kanaya]

I see we share the dubious honor of being on the chopping block twice within the same month. Can't we take turns? By my count, there are at least two more weeks before we would have needed a repeat.

[Addressed towards all now.]

Rin was... functioning up until 3:00 in the Music Room. I lost track of her at 3:15, but I never thought --

Well, that probably goes unsaid. The fault is, at least, partially mine for not being more attentive.

[speakveryclearly]

[Kanaya looks back; her eyes are particularly dead today.]

It's like you said the first week to Felicia, Miss Sto Helit. Don't take responsibility onto yourself, unless you're the murderer.

[The statement hangs in the air.]

I've been wondering for a while now, though, if the suspect list will continue to comprise five people even as now that's almost one in four "contestants". In other words, even though we know the murderer's card is on that table, being on that table is starting to say less and less from week to week as the number of cards remains the same.

Each trial, the suspects are chosen to mean... something. The Hostess wouldn't just pick five contestants who have never been chosen before if the four innocents were all peacefully reading in the library at the time of death. There's a challenge involved or else they wouldn't be able to drag this affair out over two days.

Suspect Rooms

[respecting]

[Beat looks at the body and Rin's info card and decides nope, he's not technical enough to deal with robot murders. Time to make better use of himself.]

Yo! Who's doin' room searches this time? I can go!

[speakveryclearly]

[Kanaya's not for obvious reasons but she sure is turning over her keys.]

[terriblesister]

Poland and I found the body; that's set off the alarm. It rang too early; it was just the two of us.

That means someone saw it before us... it might [-and she can only say 'might' because apparently someone spat in the creepy hostess lady's soup today-] be an accomplice.

Rin... it looked like she heading for the stairwell; knocked stuff over to get out of the way. I think she heard someone come in and tried to escape; a sword's a little obvious after all. If I'm right, that means they entered from the door into the Sapphire wing.

[souredsweet]

Ah... I had not heard about that. [the alarm going off early, that is. but the idea of an accomplice triggering the alarm early brings another thing to mind:]

If that is the case, then the rules state that an accomplice will always be among the suspects...

[notyetlost]

Sooooo... along with the rapier, I found this box. Thing. [Poland gestures to the cardboard box in the exhibits.] I dunno if it's related at all because like the bottles I found in it seem pretty full but it was at the crime scene.

Since Rin was deadweight I thought maybe it might be a "mystery box," but I mean you would think something like that would be cooler looking.

[What he is trying to not say is, that if he picked it to murder someone and THAT was the mystery box he would be super disappointed.]

[souredsweet]

The box being so plain would make it much easier to hide; perhaps that was the intent...? Especially if the culprit wished to hide it in an easily accessible location before its use. [Kaoru isn't exactly sure what "cooler looking" entails when it comes to a box full of murder, though.]

Were those the only items that you found within it?

Room Search: Rin

[allice]

Would a couple people mind coming with me to the victim's room to search it? The key was found on her body and I took it, but didn't get the time to check before the trial. May as well go there now.

[coca_cola]

[ Clyde raises his hand ]

Yeah, I'll help you look.

[throe]

[ In this week's Murder Manor: Rapture uses her immunity to be the audience for once as she watches battles between countries and princesses, and enjoy a couple of drinks while she's witnessing the entertainment.

Is this endeavor of a self-chosen week long "vacation" planned? Who knows? Only those with psychic abilities can answer that. Will Rapture's player be gone for the majority of the trial and needed a good enough reason for Rapture not getting into it like she usually does? All signs point to yes. ]

[notyetlost]

[So Poland can't entice Rapture into trying to channel the deceased spirit of Chopin through a bust in the Music Room to see if he saw the murder go down then?]

[pandacea]

So the murder must have happened between 3:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon, yes? From what the autopsy and Miss Susan say, there does not seem to be any tricks to this as there were in the last two murders. And Miss Susan also said that Rin was gone by 3:15.

In that case...can our suspects please give us their alibis during that time in more detail? Such as whether you were with anyone, or who may have seen you, or your specific actions, especially in those first fifteen minutes.

[inthebones]

I was in the courtyard with Yuzu. I had prepared afternoon tea and intended to take it alone, but as we happened upon each other, we shared some tea and snacks. I left first to return the tray and the plates - assumedly, Yuzu left the courtyard a few minutes after I did and stumbled upon the body.

I don't have exact times, but I'm fairly certain I left the courtyard a few minutes after I noticed Rin missing.

[vytis]

[After obtaining permission to leave, Lithuania heads out with Poland to the sapphire bedroom hallway.]

It's going to be difficult to find anything if we don't know what we're looking for, but maybe something is out of place.

[Does anything appear to be out of place in the hallway?]

[notyetlost]

There's only two ways to get out of the music room if there's no reason to think they jumped out the window. So at least it's narrowing things down a little.

[notyetlost]

[Poland and Kaoru start looking around the drawing room for clues because, hey. It's on the second floor why not.

Is there anything weird for them to find? Aside from Poland crawling under people's feet and rolling around the furniture.]

Find anything yet Kaoru?

[souredsweet]

[sadly Poland is the only one being an intrepid explorer; Kaoru has opted for the much less obtrusive discovery path of just kind of peering behind curtains and underneath tables.]

I am afraid that I have yet to find anything of use. ...Though, come to think of it, the culprit would be quite foolish to hide any items in an area that they know we spend two days in.

[allice]

[After examining Rin's room with Clyde, Alice returns to the Drawing Room with a laptop and power cord under her arm and looks for a place to plug it in by a table. She'll then address the crowd]

So, inside of Rin's room was her laptop and on it an encrypted file containing her data. For those of you who don't know robots, quick overview: they're basically just giant machines and Rin in particular seemed to be an Artifical Intelligence, or AI for short, who used this laptop to store all her data. This includes her memories, her thoughts, pretty much everything that made her function autonomously and be the girl we knew.

The problem is something this sensitive has a lot of protection around it and that means I'll need to brute force it to make it work. I'm not a hacker per say, but it doesn't seem to be more than a series of advanced algorithms so I can handle it on my own. Judging by the information cards it seems like no one else here is really into cyber security, so I'll have to work on this alone.

And here's the actual issue: I don't know how to write code to make the computer automatically crack the encryption, so I need to do it manually bit by bit. And that might take the rest of the day up for something this large. I may not finish by the time we break for the night, but I'll definitely have it done by tomorrow morning at the latest. I'll be cracking away at this for the rest of today most likely. If you need me for something let me know, but most of my energy is going to need to go to this. It could very well give us an insight on what Rin was doing last and bring us a breakthrough if we're lucky.

What I'm saying is: I'm going to need coffee. None of this tea crap.

[pasodoble]

( So much of this went over his head, he just has to clarify, )

Wait, wait! If her memories are in that ( pointing at the laptop, ) then you can see her last memories too? Then that means...

( Oh my goodness, his eyes light up and he practically falls over in his seat. This is good news, right?! )

... How do you like your coffee?

Body

[aozaki]

[Since Liet and Belarus brought it in, complete with the rapier!]

[aozaki]

[aka 'this thread is here because I need it'

at a disadvantage as the only one without a solid alibi, she really has to get serious now, huh. So it's with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her lips and pulling off her glasses for the examination that Touko comes over, first to check for any sort of leakage residue. Fuel and whatever liquid in cooling tubes should leave residue, after all.

After getting results from that, she'll forgo formalities and pull the rapier out to check the tip.]

Box inspection

[balzams]

[Since Yuzu bought it up he's been curious.

Latvia tries to examine the box a little more closely. He's careful not to touch it and holds his breath when he gets too close. Is the dust just settled on the bottom or are the contents covered in dust as well? Has it been disturbed in any obvious way?]

[productions]

[The dust is just on the bottom of the box, that is, the outside of the box. There isn't any dust inside.]

[obsideo]

(Shows up late with Starbucks.

Felicia has been observing the trial, and is frowning to herself.)

Okay, can we talk about this? This trial isn't making any sense. It seems like none of the suspects could have done it. Gundam and Sonia could only do it if they were accomplices, and that's out the window if Annie's telling the truth. Susan and Kanaya were both accounted for. Touko isn't, but it would sure be hard to get up to the music room from the grounds. Did anyone check if someone climbed or jumped like Annie did?

Then we have the deadweight items. We know the sword was one of them, but what was the other? If they didn't need a second one, why wouldn't they take the skeleton key and kill her somewhere way less obvious than the music room in the middle of the day? Why even take the sword if they used a poker, why try to hide that they did use a poker? If the second item was that stupid mystery box...why leave it at the scene?

I don't really think any of our suspects strike me as this sloppy. So...let's say it's not just sloppiness. We have to start thinking what would make a killer want to do these things.

I think the music room is easiest. My theory would be that they did it there because they wanted the body to be found fast. Maybe they even wanted Susan to know when she died. Because they knew they had an alibi.

[teenspirit]

So these confusing circumstances... You think they were all on purpose-? And that there may be a deadweight item we are not considering?

[ Well, the box does seem particularly pointless so far... ]

[notyetlost]

[Poland adds the poker to the exhibits and addresses the room.]

Okay so like thanks to my super helpful and productive experiment, I'm pretty sure the murder weapon was a hot poker. [Tadah!]

I think the rapier is like a total distraction.

[obsideo]

But why. Why would they even try to hide it was a poker? And what happened to it, if it's not the one in Susan's room?

[teenspirit]

Ahem. Felicia brought up a salient point.

To be honest, I do not believe the box that was found to be the secondary obtained item. It is not nearly, um... Well, it is simply not theatrical enough to suit the show, yes?

Let us reconsider the list, and go through it carefully. Let's decide what things were definitely not involved in the murder... and we shall grow closer to the truth.

I think we could safely eliminate the fingerprinting kit, the sword, the chloroform, the skeleton key, the rifle and ammunition- perhaps they are listed seperately because you need to get both to use it- and the food and water. These things all immediately seem like non-factors.

Anyone else?

[vytis]

Something like a mystery box for a television show does seem like it should look more--mysterious. [As opposed to a cardboard box.]

I don't think the medical kit would have much use here. The crossbow seems unlikely, too, unless they manipulated the wound later, but the murder seems to have taken place fairly quickly, and that would defeat the purpose of killing at a distance.

Study

[notyetlost]

[After such a terribly shocking betrayal, Poland opts to get out of the stuffy drawing room and do more investigating. Specifically in the study.

Are any of the beakers or containers missing from the room?]

[productions]

[Maybe, but there are a lot of beakers and containers here. Would he be able to tell if one was missing?]

[humanic]

Okay, so now that we've searched every room, can we get our suspects to explain what their item is? Gundam's looked like a regular yearbook. Susan has the rules to the freaking universe, so the incentives this week are obviously not equal in scale.

I didn't investigate the other rooms, but evidently Sonia has an angel statue, Kanaya has a spiky ball, and Touko has some kind of plant? You guys wanna give us the details on them?

[godwhisperer]

Yes, I'm certain that to mortal eyes it did indeed appear to be a mere yearbook.