Murder on the Majestic Otter

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC Yeah, think I'm still gonna be out of the action for a while longer. I'm having a cluster of them right now. Takes me a tonne of effort to write a sentence. /OOC

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC I'm going to re-read and post in more detail over the next few days. In the meantime; some character development./OOC

Leo made his way to the Lambass bar with a dark look on his face and a darker mindset. He and his brother had a whole lot more to say to each other before this situation was resolved, that was obvious, when it would stop was anyone's guess.

It had always been that way (at least in his mind it had been). Leo, the first born, had been the trail run for everything his parents had planned for their 'great family legacy' ever since he'd been old enough to toddle and on the receiving end of all their mistakes. His scolding's had been harsher, his tutors shorter tempered, his introductions to higher society delivered in less graceful terms, and while he'd risen to the every task his father had ever given him it had been transparently obvious from his point of view that he had simply been there to ease the passage of his younger brother Moriarty. Morty, who'd swum with such grace through every encounter as if the stage had been set for him. Who'd enjoyed such kinder words as opposed to a bunched fist when he'd wandered off the beaten path. While they'd put on the necessary airs and graces in their earlier years, Leo's branching out to a lawless lifestyle and Moriarty being the heir apparent to the Landau business interests had created a gap between the siblings that might not ever be repaired. The death of their father had only served to crack the shell off that particular nut.

As Leo planted himself heavily into a stool and ordered a whisky he began, idly, to wonder if he even cared to help his brother at all anymore.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: I'll let you dig out, and come up with ideas for, what Anna-Lisa+Eve+Eisenfaust are up to. As for the others:]

Khoo and Jade were the closest of the investigating crew to the fitness room, and therefore to the scream. It didn't take them long to get to both; specifically, to Kevin, cringing on the floor and moaning with pain. No one else was in sight.

"What happened, man?" one or both asked him ... and when he looked up, he had the same missing-in-action look that Lonnie Budriel had shown just minutes earlier. It passed quickly and was replaced by something more consistent with being in agony.

"Shoulder's hurt, bad," he said through clenched teeth. "Dislocated, I think."

A quick inspection confirmed that this was so. Well, that was an injury that Khoo [OOC: and, I would guess, Jade] knew how to do something about. Like most Sashi Mu graduates, he'd had a mandatory "Introduction to Battlemagery" class that included a brief bit of first aid, mainly non-magical but with a little bit of Healing that most any Sashi Mu grad could do. The thaumatic part came first, pain reduction coupled with treatment for shock. Good, Khoo thought; at least he hadn't hurt the man worse. (Yet.) Careful manipulation by the pair got the arm back in its joint. With any luck, they wouldn't have done any nerve damage in the process.

"You'll need to see the lifemage about this injury," Khoo said when they were done. "She'll fix the damage that I don't know how to, if there is any." Then he repeated, "So how did this happen?"

That blank look again. "I -- I don't know. Think I must have been lifting more than I should have, lost the barbell over my head, didn't think to drop the damn thing." The fog was clearing. "Yeah, that musta been it." If he was going to say more, it was interrupted by a wave of pain; some nerves were still unhappy about what had been done to them.

It was not lost on Khoo and Jade that all the barbells were still ensconced innocently in their rack, at the far end of the room.

-----------

If the bar had any no-minors-allowed rules, either they weren't enforced, or Tori, the girl who had turned Leo away from the bridge, was older than she looked. Either way, she interrupted Leo's communion with his whisky, with a quiet clearing of her throat and a soft touch. "Sir?" she said when he looked up. "Captain said to give you this." She handed him an envelope, addressed simply "Big Brother," and left without a word.

The message inside [OOC: I'm assuming Leo will open it] had only three words, which didn't last long before the paper on which they were written dissolved into nothingness, but lasted long enough.

I'm in trouble.

[OOC: Incidentally, I have subluxated my right shoulder probably thirty times or more, dating waaaay back to a high-school sports injury, so I kinda know what Kevin is feeling here ... although it never happened to me quite like it happened to him.]

[Jack Rothwell]

Jade raised an eyebrow at the firework display of suspiciousness that the circumstances of Kevin's concussion were wrapped up in. Medicine wasn't exactly a speciality of hers, unless repairing inanimate objects qualified, and Kevin was a sentient being as far as she could tell. The blank spots in his memory were certainly something worth following up on.

"Khoo? I don't suppose a mage like yourself has any knowledge of magic detection? Does amnesia magic exist by any chance?

[Graybeard]

"Khoo? I don't suppose a mage like yourself has any knowledge of magic detection? Does amnesia magic exist by any chance?

Khoo shrugged his shoulders, feeling a momentary, involuntary wince of pain in sympathy with Kevin. "Sure, I've got basic detection magic, most anybody from Sashi Mu does. Nothing special, though, unless I needed it for my dissertation." Now why did I use the past tense for that? "I can do a bunch of highly specialized detection on air magic, but I don't think that's very useful here." He was wrong about that part, although he didn't know it yet.

Kevin, still in obvious pain, was getting gingerly to his feet as Khoo answered the other part of Jade's question. "As for amnesia magic, yeah, it's out there, but we're not supposed to mess with it even at the graduate level unless we're specialists, which I'm not." [OOC: It has come up in the game several times, for example here and here. For that last one, however, note that Maduin had a wee bit of Mary Sue in his makeup... Anyway, Khoo doesn't know about these and would be answering just based on his experience. /OOC] "If you're wondering whether I could detect it if it was used on this poor guy, the answer is that I can't, not if it has already happened. It's pretty clear from symptoms that something like that happened here."

"Concussion?" somebody wondered, it not being clear who.

Khoo thought about it. "Could be. Maybe no magic needed. Either way, we need to find a lifemage. They'll be able to tell, and he needs one anyway." Khoo thought he'd seen a commissary down on one of the main passenger decks, and they set off looking for it, never mind that the ship's Healer was still missing in action.

[Jack Rothwell]

Leo's reaction to the message on the paper was one of poker faced stoicism. His gut gave him a firm 'I told you so' while his thoughts were a mixture of concern for his blood and an appalling sense of smugness that his younger brother was the bad one for once.

Tromping off now would give the game away to anyone who was watching and his brother might come to meet him yet besides. Leo ordered another drink, adopted the posture of someone without a care in the world, and resolved to give it an hour before he'd take any action.

............

Anna-Lisa was on that one. "They've got a mole on board?"

The two Eisenfaust women nodded as one. "And we'd better figure out who it is," Elke said.

"I'd suspect someone close to the captain or the captain himself." Eve suggested. "Having the inside track on the goings on in the ship would make sense for these kind of shenanigans and, besides, if Leo's brother is anything like Leo, the chances of him being squeaky clean are practically non-existent."



OOC I'm slowly but sure making more time for this. FYI, i just landed a part as Santa for a big chain over the November/Christmas period. So I'll be intermittently spreading cheer between posting in the threads. Sure would be nice if more people got on this but it looks like we've got some guests adding to the view count./OOC

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Interesting gig for an actor at Christmas! Break a leg, but preferably not any little kid's! Meanwhile, a thing I noticed: the character doing the talking in the first section has been called both "Heinrich" and "Jake" at various times. I vote for using "Heinrich" on a continuing basis, as there have been several other characters named Jake in Errant Road and there's less opportunity for confusion if we call him Heinrich -- unless you want him to be the same guy as the Jake who popped up way back here. We could do that, although it wasn't my plan (I'd completely forgotten about this early one); what he's going to say in the next entry or two would make it make sense, almost.]

"Nice ass for a half elf, don'tcha think?" a voice said next to Leo, startling him out of his reveries both because of the message and the fact that the speaker had approached undetected. It was the large cigar-smoking man who'd hit on Jade (sort of) earlier, but now he was leering in the direction of the retreating Tori, who had been waylaid by a middle-aged, obviously drunk passenger. He had another cigar now. with which he gestured in the girl's direction. Seeing Leo's puzzlement, he continued, "I know, hard to tell, ain't it? But she is, so I hear. That's why she's got this gig. Half elves age slower than we do. Looks like a teenager, but she's prob'ly thirty. Legal to be in this bar ..." he took a puff on his cigar ... "and for other things."

----------

Elke thought about Eve's statement, shook her head. "Not the captain, probably not any of the senior crew. The Mesuinus wouldn't allow it. Saiko takes very badly to one of the Farrelite outfits trying to infiltrate her own operation." She shuddered, remembering the "peace conference" back at Mountain of Madness. Some idiot in one of the minor guilds had attended and thought he'd seen an opening for his outfit to exploit the place, which the Gewehr, Eisenfaust, and most other attendees understood very clearly was off limits to them. A few days later, his body had washed up in one of the water rides at the park, his genitals having been gnawed off by something nobody wanted to think about.

"Most likely either one of the junior, temporary crew or a passenger," she continued, unaware that there was a flaw in her analysis; unaware for the time being, anyway.

[Jack Rothwell]

Leo raised a sardonic eyebrow at the man's statement.

"I prefer women who don't look like they're barely ready for college but, to each his own." He took another sip of his drink. "Who's been taking an interest in her species anyway?"

.....


"Perhaps a look at the crew roster would reveal some clues then." Eve mused. "I'm they'll be some kind of human resources type person who would have access to that information. A vessel as decadent as this is bound to have some issues with personnel conduct."

[Graybeard]

[OOC: "Heinrich" is not cruising for a fight here; I don't think he's seen Jade and Leo together. If I'm wrong about that, let me know and I'll retcon, as he actually has enough social sense (barely) not to be intentionally provocative in this setting. Which, of course, doesn't mean that Leo can't take offense at what he says ... so let's let him say it.]

The large man chortled and blew a smoke ring. The smoke was instantly gathered up by the ship's air conditioning system. The chortle was not. "Hey, different strokes for different folks. Some guys get their kicks by boffing gun-toting grown-up tomboys. Anyway, who's taking an interest in a half elf going into hiding? Haven't been out much, have you? An elf, of course." He looked around and his voice fell a few decibels, and not just because it was emerging around the cigar. "Speaking of which, if you see one, let me know, okay?"

----------


Elke's voice also dropped a notch or two; the time of the day was quarter past conspiratorial. "Under other circumstances I'd guess the first officer, that guy the crew call 'The Stuffed Shirt,' Morokuma I think is his name. I don't think he's a good one to ask for information, though. From what I've gathered, he's as likely to pitch you overboard as to help you out."

Annabelle had an idea. "Maybe the chief steward? He has to know where all his own people are, at least."

It didn't take long for Elke to nod approval. "Let's see if we can find him, and then come back to this subject after we do."

[OOC: The chief steward is Takashi, an old friend of Anna-Lisa's, introduced here and mentioned in a few comments shortly afterward. He's fair game for character development.]

----------

"We may have a problem," Khoo said as he and Jade steered a wobbly Kevin toward the infirmary. "This really needs to get looked at by a lifemage or healer, and we're kind of missing one at the moment."

Kevin surprised them with a coherent reply through the pain. "On a ship with this many people, there'll be a backup, somebody on board for other reasons but they can still do Healing magic. Get me to the infirmary, and either the backup will be there, or there'll be a button to call them. I used to work on the docks," he added on seeing Khoo's puzzlement. "Crews always have spare skills built in."

The infirmary wasn't far away -- nothing on a ship is that far from anything else, after all -- and it was clear at once that Kevin was right and option number 1, backup Healer, was correct.

[OOC: Got anybody of the named characters so far that you want to have fill that role? I have one in mind, but I'\e been sorta hogging the character development here. If you see an opportunity that you want to develop, all yours.]

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Just to keep things from getting too stagnant, an addendum to the last of the three scenes above, and also a reminder that this cruise ship is, well, a cruise ship. I said that there'd be evidence that a backup Healer was available for the infirmary; I didn't say he or she would be alive. So:]

"Hm, that's strange," Khoo mused as the trio reached the infirmary. Its door was flopping open, and something didn't smell right about it. Something also felt wrong to Khoo's magic sensibilities; he might not have been a specialist in detection magic, but any Tsuirakuan with any magic skill at all could somehow "feel" when magic was in use. (Social norms meant that this feeling was ignored and outright suppressed when proprieties required it, as when Illusion spells were up, but it was still there in the back of one's mind.)

The three crept up to the door more stealthily than they'd expected to, and finally, Khoo poked his head around the door to see what lay within ...

"ERKKK!"

The answer was a large knife lying on the examination couch -- and blood. LOTS of blood.

But no body.

--------------

Just about that time, the ship's noisy bell/foghorn sounded. This would be the call for those ashore, or more likely in this setting, off on a pleasure boat or paraglider, to get back aboard; the ship would sail again in two hours ...

... If everything went right.