video; un: hopscotch

[clavesregni]

[Caitlyn has found a small corner somewhere in the Wards that she's turned into a personal headquarters. Several sheets of paper, covered in incomprehensibly messy scribbles, are stuck to the walls, and there's plenty of room for more to come. She's even found some colored string somewhere and has started to make connections between the papers with the strings.

She speaks very enthusiastically. Nothing makes Caitlyn's whole being light up like detective work.]

I've begun working on solving the series of murders that have occurred here over the last eleven weeks.

The victims were all male, between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-five. There are no other obvious connections between the victims, no common physical characteristics, profession, or origin. We'll need to dig if we want to find any commonalities apart from sex and a rough age range. And, with only five victims, we can't entirely rule out the idea that the commonalities we do know of may be coincidental.

There are rumors circulating of someone referred to as the 'Reaper,' who is punishing the people here for abandoning their duty. I don't know if that's the killer's true motivation; why kill only young men? There's something more going on here.

There are two clear points of interest:

First, none of the victims have an obvious cause of death. Some have wounds, but nothing that would be fatal under normal circumstances, and none appear to have been ill. How is the Reaper killing the victims?

Second, all have a white string tied around their wrists. This must be some sort of calling card, though what it means is not yet clear. If we can determine the meaning of the string, it could give us an insight into the killer's motivations and perhaps their identity.

I suggest we collaborate in our work to find the killer.

Comments

[scrapgege]

I guess because he wears white robes?

Also, he might not be alone. There is a child with him. A child he has probably turned into another unfortunate creature. That child provoked a sickness on an entire citadel, the one where we were before here. People died and their spirits didn't even linger around. There were no ghosts at all in the whole place. It was very strange.

But given that there's an undead war lord outside the gates, he's involved somehow anyway.

[clavesregni]

[This is all very interesting and gives her quite a lot to think about.]

Does he have any sort of calling cards, do you know? Other than the presence of undead, of course. Has he ever been known to leave behind white items before?

[scrapgege]

Well, he's left body parts... We're assuming they're his or related to him, at least. So far, we found a heart and a tongue.

And there's this weird water, too. It's black and it has some really weird effects on living things.

[clavesregni]

A heart and tongue? [That's certainly upsetting. But hearts and tongues are symbolic body parts, so it could have a meaning beyond merely being gruesome.]

What sorts of effects?

[scrapgege]

It seems to vary according to temperature, if I remember correctly. When it's really cold, it's fine and even does good things, but otherwise, it turns animals into monsters and gives sentience to plants and things like that.

There was some sort of ghost tree in Ke-Waihu because of that, and lost of animals being turned into strange things.

[clavesregni]

That... doesn't sound like what's going on here. If he is responsible for the creation of the undead, he likely is involved somehow, but leaving body parts about and black water... This killer leaves the bodies entirely intact, with no marks or obvious signs of injury or illness. And none have risen as undead. There's no black water or effects such as you're describing.

I'm not entirely willing to write the color off as a coincidence, but I suspect this killer and the White Traveler are not one and the same.

[scrapgege]

He probably didn't kill them himself, I agree. But whoever did might have some sort of association with him, or do it on his behalf.

[clavesregni]

Yes, that's quite possible. It does beg the question what his ultimate goal is, however, and how killing these seemingly random men would further it.