subdivided | week three: trial

Week Three: Trial
22 in Competition

It may be difficult to sleep with the light shining so brightly throughout the night, but the participants can rest easy knowing they will not be plagued by unwanted, disturbing dreams. Early the next day, a bell chimes and all will feel compelled to enter the main meeting hall.

The hall looks mostly the same as it always has, the two thrones for Lune and Sol at the head of the room and scrolls hanging from the walls. The metal box sits on a table near the front, along with the glass boxes perfectly centered before the benches in the room. Now that the trial is in session, Swift Wind and Hisoka's coffins are open, and their bodies will be available for examination.

Lune and Sol are seated in their thrones, patiently waiting for the last participant to settle. It's only when everyone has gathered that Sol speaks first.

"We've got a lot of ground to cover today. Don't give up."

They stop, glancing at Lune and gesturing for them to say their piece.

"Face the truth directly, and don't turn away from what you may find."

✩★✩

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fourth trial!

We'll go over a few notes briefly as we will be playing this trial a bit differently than other games.

As noted, there was no investigation period on Friday. However, today participants will have the chance to investigate areas in the game setting as they see fit! This can be done by providing the name of the location you want to visit to the host header comment. To help with the ease of the trial and for IC mechanics, only one location may be visited at a time. In addition, these locations can be manipulated and adjusted upon request to test theories and solve puzzles, so please feel free to ask if you're searching for clues! Your host will also be accompanying you on these visits.

Most importantly, before the trial is over, please place your character's vote over on the voting page. Voting will close at 9pm EST/6pm PST, and will serve as our activity check for the week, so please be sure you get your vote in before it ends unless you have contacted us previously.

If you have any questions at any time, please let do us know by pinging us on Discord! Dana and Ty will be in the chat and available for all questions. Thank you, and have fun!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If they were poisoning him though, what would be the point of then tying him up? Did they just want to be extra cautious?

He can fly, maybe? If you want to administer poison to someone, you probably don't want them flying away mid attempt. Even if it's just that hovering he could do, it could be enough.

Edited 2019-06-29 17:51 (UTC)

I don't know. Even with being able to hover, he can't go too high. We didn't clear a ton of air when we were in battle a few weeks ago. But it would explain the location of the bindings. [Hm.]

That seems even more cruel then. Tying someone up just to kill them later. He would have to know what was coming.

[ Joke's on them, Saix and Swift Wind are just morons. ]

Maybe they wanted him to know.

We know that the Corruption can infect anyone, and no one remembers what they did when under its influence, but there may be people out there who hold grudges regardless.

A spite murder then. [Wow.] It's entirely possible but then you'd have to find someone who would hold a grudge against a serial-killing yet oblivious horse.

[ look a clown? exploded? kaoru? anything is possible here and it's distressing. ]

Probably start with people close to Junna and Fujino. It's not definite, but if you were planning a revenge murder it'd probably be for someone who was killed.

[ . . . ]

I forgave him for Junna, and would sooner have picked other people to target if I was corrupted.

[she'll volunteer this pretty easily at least]

I don't know if she and Fujino associated with many others though... Maybe it was someone who felt it unfair that he was allowed to get away with murder even if it wasn't his fault?

[ Bless you, Lili An, for just saying it as it is. ]

They kept themselves to themselves, from what I know. I didn't really speak to either of them.

[ . . . ]

Is it better or worse we might be dealing with a "justice" vigilante over someone out for revenge?

Worse.

Others defining their own weak sense of self-satisfaction as 'justice', harming people for circumstances outside of their control, makes them far worse than their intended target.

It only serves to make them feel better, at the end of the day. I... can't say none of us wanted him dead otherwise he'd be alive right now, but we were glad we saved him.

Killing him destroys all the effort people went through for that. And that happiness.

So it's also someone selfish.

Or blinded by the idea they're doing the right thing.

Regardless of whether or not anyone's senses of justice match up here, that should be the sticking point. That whoever killed Swift Wind wasted the effort everyone put forward to keeping him alive, and made it all for nothing.

It's easy to get into an ideological argument that benefits nothing but someone's sense of self-righteousness, but regardless, the effects of their actions are indisputable.

I'm not trying to get into an argument about morality and self-righteousness. I'm annoyed too - last week changed everything for us! And now it looks like all we did was slap a target on Swift Wind's back!

I'm pretty sure those people might already be dead, too. [Is he still bitter about Nana? Yeah.]

[ Pours a banana smoothie out for Nana. Miki misses her. ]

Then maybe like Lili said? Someone against him getting away with murder in general, whether it was his fault or not.

Or the Corruption itself looking for revenge.

Lili usually has very good instincts. [Proud of her.] We do have several people here who are against this whole thing, corruption or not.

I wish we understood more about the corruption itself though to know if it would work against itself like that.

[she's pretending that she's not hearing this stop being embarrassing]

She's not afraid to make them known, either. [ Loudly. She's doing her very best. ] But taking it on yourself to go against everything we achieved last week is...

[ Mm. Bad. ]

Maybe people who have been corrupted before are more difficult to recorrupt? Like a virus, maybe you do build up resistance to it...

I know. But it's better to cover everything now than later so we have time to rule things out. [He folds his arms over his chest, looking at the ceiling to think.]

If we're treating this like a virus, then the resistance must be strong. And if a corrupted person went after someone who was previously corrupted, the host would have to be fairly strong themselves, wouldn't they?

... Swift Wind was corrupted for two weeks. I don't know in terms of strength, but in terms of exposure time and then having the cause purified, he might have had a higher resistance than the darkness had assumed.

So then we should be looking for someone strong enough to take down a horse, especially once corrupted. [Yikes.]

[ Ack. ]

There are a lot of strong people here, that only narrows it down a little but... it's something, at least.

Ruling out a little is still better than learning nothing at all. That's what we have to tell ourselves.

Even if it means a horse wrestling power house with a warped sense of justice is running around out there.

[ ... it's fine. ]

It's fine.

(no subject)

twinsightful - 2019-06-29 19:28 (UTC) - Expand

stillstands - 2019-06-29 19:32 (UTC) - Expand

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