spacecoast | WEEK 1: TRIAL

WEEK 1 TRIAL 43 CREW ACTIVE

ALL CREW MEMBERS, PLEASE REPORT TO THE CONFERENCE HALL AT 1200 HOURS. REPEAT, ALL CREW MEMBERS REPORT TO THE CONFERENCE HALL AT 1200 HOURS. I.R.I.S. SYSTEMS ARE UPDATING TO ALLOW SHIP AND CONCOURSE-WIDE ACCESS AT THIS TIME IN PREPARATION FOR INVESTIGATION AND RESOLUTION OF THE EVENTS FROM THURSDAY EVENING AND FRIDAY MORNING. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND COOPERATION.

Good morning, junior crew. With the heavy news of last night carrying into Saturday morning, things are incredibly quiet around the CSS Eudora. You may carry on with your personal business during the morning, but come 11:00, a soothing voice will cut into the air and announce that at 12:00 everyone must report to "the Conference Hall." Strange, however, that it's not on the map.

Never fear, your I.R.I.S. will automatically project a small beam of warm, orange light on the ground, directing you towards an enormous lift stationed by the mess hall. Come 11:50, if you aren't on the lift, you will certianly find yourself moving there physically whether you intend it or not. The lift is capable of carrying every occupant of the Eudora to a sublevel ramp that leads towards the mentioned Conference Hall.

The enormous hall opens up past two large, double doors with the word EUDORA printed over it. Within, a lengthy monitor sprawls across the entirety of it, displaying Thursday night's victims profiles along with a large map of the Eudora herself. With plush, dark seats in rows and a long table at the head of the room where four members of your senior crew await, it is clear what exactly this space is for, especially as the words TRIAL IN SESSION appear on the monitor and an ominous-looking countdown:
09:00:00

DE̶ÇO͝MḾIƧ̸S͢IO̵ИED͞

Welcome to your second trial! Over the course of the next nine hours, characters will have the opportunity to discuss, investigate and theorize about Viktor's murder. Characters will have time to examine the body of the victim and explore relevant locations.

There will be a mod-tag break between 4 PM EST / 1 PM PST to 5 PM EST / 2 PM PST. While the trial may continue and players can tag each other, mod-led threads such as questions and investigations will be on hold.

Finally, we have a voting page for characters to vote on the culprit! Please be sure that your vote is in by the time trial finishes at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST, unless you've spoken with the mods previously, as we'll begin tallying votes on the dot. Voting is mandatory for Spacecoast, acting as our weekly activity check in this game.

Good luck!

NAVIGATE

QUESTIONS

INVESTIGATION REQUESTS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, if the programming's already a little on the simplistic side and if you know what you're looking for you can work quickly. Plus we don't know if Viktor bought himself some time in order to change it into an attack cat. It's possible he did and used it as a distraction to try and get away.

He was there with us, so he must have started as he soon as he realized what was up...

[ he's imagining what that must have felt like and. oof. ]

Those things aren't really made for attacking, though. It probably wouldn't have lasted long, no matter what he did.

Yeah... [ he. hates thinking about this, actually. like being a caged animal trying to figure out how to escape. ] It might not even be that he would mess with it to make it attack. If someone's not used to them, or not expecting it, you could still throw them off with the element of surprise. Give him more time to try and outsmart them and survive.

So, it may be best used against someone who isn't really skilled with technology...

If that's what this is, then yeah. That's definitely an option. If it's someone who isn't skilled with technology it's possible they wouldn't know it couldn't actually really hurt them.

Mm... and you're right, you can just use those few moments of confusion to try to get away. Any amount of extra seconds you can get can help.

[ not in this case, obviously, but it's not like viktor would know that at the time. ]

[ ... ]

Yeah. If you're not someone who's used to combat, even a little bit of time can give you enough hope. And it must've worked a little while if he managed to get out of the food court, at least.

(no subject)

discomfort - 2024-03-09 18:42 (UTC) - Expand

solesuccess - 2024-03-09 18:44 (UTC) - Expand

discomfort - 2024-03-09 18:45 (UTC) - Expand

solesuccess - 2024-03-09 18:46 (UTC) - Expand

discomfort - 2024-03-09 18:49 (UTC) - Expand

solesuccess - 2024-03-09 18:55 (UTC) - Expand

riverbeans - 2024-03-09 18:57 (UTC) - Expand

discomfort - 2024-03-09 18:59 (UTC) - Expand

naeddre - 2024-03-09 19:00 (UTC) - Expand

If that's what happened perhaps it was merely going to be a distraction to allow him to flee.

[Viktor wasn't exactly a combat-ready person, from what Sora knew, and he managed to get all the way to the medbay where his body was found]

It's what makes the most sense if that's how this situation played out, but we're going to have to hear what the investigation team found before we take that theory any further.

Maybe the latter. He probably didn't know who it was yet, right? Unless they were in the food court with him, but then he wouldn't have as much time to work on it...

That is true. If the culprit and Mr. Viktor woke up at the exact same time, Mr. Viktor wouldn't have time to reprogram anything. I doubt any killer would 'play fair' and give time to prepare before striking.

[Sora shrugs]

Then again, we're making too many guesses without details yet. We'll see, after those who went to the food court find out what's wrong.

Depends on the state of the food court, probably. We know he started there and ended in the medbay, so once the investigation team comes back and tells us what else they found we might be able to determine if his attacker also started there or not.

And no one mentioned being in the cargo bay, so... it's still possible.

[ sighs ]

At least we can probably guess the route they took.

We're doing a little better than last week? [ hopefully. ]

Is there some indication of tampering that we should look out for to gauge this theory? Tools that he might've used...?

If it turns out a robot's involved a lot of it would be checking its interior and seeing how the whole thing's programmed. It might be as easy as switching some wires, or it's more complicated with a whole switchboard of mechanisms that require more fine-tuning.

The multitool might've worked, too. That's what I was using for maintenance on Roboji for a while.

Could there be useful tools in the cargo bay?

[looks at charles pspspsps]

Did you see any tools when you were there?

There's a medical kit, but I didn't see any tools for machinery specifically. Granted, we weren't really looking for those at the time.

[medical kit.... he nods]

I told Shoma last night that you or Throné should look at the cargo bay, since you've already been.

riverbeans - 2024-03-09 18:42 (UTC) - Expand

pathematic - 2024-03-09 18:43 (UTC) - Expand

Possibly. I know a few people were there this week, and we're going to have to go back and look later anyway, but it's also possible that Viktor could have asked one of the senior crew members for something even before Thursday.

[ programming....

wires........................

switchboard...................... ]

I see. Some options then. Though we should also consider if the interference was by his assailant, though it feels a rather roundabout way of committing murder.

Yeah, that's an angle to consider at least until we can officially rule it out but I agree with you. It'd be a roundabout way of trying to kill someone unless...I don't know. They thought they could run him over and take him out of commission.

[ oh he actually hates that idea. ]

[ okay well that's terrible given everything else going on with viktors body ]

I wonder as well if... Whatever drives the murderer to kill is an infection of some sort, if that can affect these other mechanized creatures they encounter.

[ dion like could it be... the plague? ]

...that I haven't considered yet. About it traveling to a machine, I mean. [ he's already driven himself crazy about the other part. ] But that would imply whoever infected the robot would've known and I don't think that makes enough sense with what we know so far.

agamid - 2024-03-09 18:47 (UTC) - Expand