Screw Mafia - Let's Play Monster Squad! You know, for Grown Ups!

I- I didn't even know what happened! I was just getting out of bed to get some ice from the hallway, and I thought I heard something on the other side of the Hotel. I didn't know what it was, so I went to go look, in case someone was in trouble or something, y'know? And, and I noticed that one empty apartment, the one with the broken sink that wouldn't drain so Harry couldn't rent it out, and the door was open even though it shouldn't have been so I looked in and...

Okay, I screamed! Wouldn't you? I mean, I couldn't even tell it was him at first, it was so horrible. The stuff on the walls and the floors and oh my god, I almost threw up it was so terrible. Could you really blame me for screaming?

...I was just glad there wasn't any blood. And I think we should look at the paper. Even if it can't help him now.

Well, shoot. Who's gonna fix my leaky tap now?

Uh, right. Poor guy. Someone should probably pick up that piece of paper, but I ain't doin' it.

Live List

1. Anabanana
2. Ozzo
3. soundlyParanoid
4. Gryff
5. Jacquelle
6. maniskumquat
7. Matthew Schempp
8. AaronSofaer
9. Kat
10. jordantigers
11. KWhit
12. JohnStargazer
13. Tome-Chan
14. Harry Boggs - Townie Landlord - Dead

Edit: Now is a good time to 'Watch' the thread to keep up with the happenings therein.

Aaron leans against the wall, scowling. Tall, with long, blond hair, he looks as though he should be dressed in a suit and saying "Bidness is bidness", a pair of meaty men by his sides cracking his knuckles. In reality, he's wearing nothing but fuzzy pajama pants, a knife the size of his thigh dangling from his left hand.

Fuck. Rest in peace, you hairy son of a bitch. As a handyman, you made a good landlord. But at least the water ran clean and the power didn't fuckin' so much as flicker.

He pops open the flask in his right hand and drinks absently.

Anyone think we should call the fuckin' pigs in? No? Alright, good, so we agree. Wonder what's on the fuckin paper, though.

He reaches over with the knife, spearing the paper and looking it over.

W-what does it say? This... There's no way this could be a suicide, right?

Aaron cuts the paper out of Harry's pocket. As he begins to open it, Harry's body frees itself of the wall, falling onto the hard linoleum with a sickening crunch. A key falls out of his pocket when he hits the floor. The key looks very much like your own key, to your own apartment.

Trying to ignore the horrible sight everyone crowds around Aaron to look at the note.

The note reads:

Apt 102
4-32-21

What now?

4-32-21? That sounds like a fuckin' safe or padlock combo. Great. A fuckin' mystery novel in real life. Who's Sherlock fuckin' Holmes, cause it sure ain't me?

Jacquelle carefully sneaks around everyone and slips the key into the pocket of her nightgown.

This seems like a trap. I mean, I don't think Harry would have been able to right this note, so that means it must have been left by... whoever did this. And why would they try to help? It doesn't make any sense.

Write. You write notes, you don't right them, unless you are editing them, which I am not allowed to do to the above post.

WHAT IS WITH ALL THIS DAMNED NOISE?!

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

Oh.

Tome runs a hand through her dark curls, still mussed from sleep. She takes a deep, albeit shaky, breath and assesses the situation. After shaking her head sadly, she turns to Jacquelle.

Are you all right?

Everyone who joins late will also read the note.

"Y-yeah. Yeah, I'm all right."

She shivers, pulling her thin coat around her tightly. Then she looks around the room.

"So was it one of us?"

Tome pauses a moment to consider before answering Jacquelle. When she spoke, her accent thickened slightly as it always did in times of stress.
Yes, Jacquelle. That may very vell be the case.

Tome straightens her silk pajamas and nods her head absently as she peers at the note.

Vere did you find zis note?
It is quite perplexing. A safe, perhaps?

As she is thinking, she straightens up and walks over to the body. The others in the room barely hear her mutter.

Ahh, Harry. You vere such an arsch.

Oh goodness gracious!!

Is he....?

This is terrible!

Who could do such a thing?

[[OOC: Need some clarifications.

Who's the "you"? Whose key is this? Aaron's? The landlord's?

Can we get a list of who lives in what apartment?]]

Anabanana strides onto the scene, hair mussed and eyes red, and is about to scream like a bitch about all the racket - but then she sees the owner's corpse, the gore plastering the floor, puts two and two together and makes a face of disgust.

"Somebody needs to clean that up, and it sure ain't gonna be me."

She notices Tome staring at the note and snatches it out of Aaron's hands.

"Gimme that, boy. Eurgh, it's covered in blood... did you pry this off the corpse or something? Let's see..."

She holds the note as far from her face as possible, squinting to see the words on it.

"What's this? Apartment 102... 4-32-21? Hah?"

[[Agh, sorry, edited to add in the italics, forgot the no-editing rule. >_<]]

The key was in the landlords pocket. The you is the group as a whole. :D

Anabanana thinks about who lives in apartment 102 and realizes it was Harry's. Most of you probably knew that.

It's alright.

Also if you want somewhere to put the body, there is an incinerator near room 102. You'll probably be needing it in the future as Harry won't be the last one to die around here.

I'll put instructions or important info in bold and story in italics.

"Fucking 'ell. 'sa right mess in 'ere, ennit?" The odd, disheveled man announced himself around an unlit cigarette as he entered, taking it in with a quick glance. "Moved from bloody London to get away from this shite, din't I, fat lot of good it's done me." He leans past Ana's shoulder to read the note, smelling faintly of gin and long nights. "Ah, nice of them ta leave a clue. Too often these bugger's kill someone, eat their eyes, and scarper without so much as leaving a forwarding address. Shall we give 'er a once over and see what the obvious trap's about then, or leave ourselves up piss creek without clue one?"

[[OOC: So the key is the key to Harry's apartment then? All right.

Can I search Apartment 201, keeping an eye for anything that looks like it would need a password combination to open?

Also somebody should clean up the corpse and the room to make investigating easier. I'd do it, but it'd be OOC for my character, so somebody else should do it.]]

"If we're going to search Harry's apartment, I think... I think we should go as a group. That way, if... whoever did this..."

She shudders and turns away from the corpse by her feet.

"If they're still there... well, there's supposed to be safety in numbers, right? I think that'd be better than just one of us going alone. Right?"

Ana nods and lets the note flutter back down to rest by the corpse.

"That's fine with me."

The group approaches door 102, Harry's place. Jacquelle takes the key out of her pocket and opens the door. She then pockets the key again and hides behind the group, waiting for them to enter.

When everyone enters Harry's residence you see how, well, clean it is. While clean, it is also cluttered with artifacts from many different cultures. There are scrolls with Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Latin and even Sanskrit on the walls. There are shrunken heads, chicken bones, dream catchers, and is that a crystal ball?

In the middle of the room is a safe. It has a small piece of paper glued to it. "In case I'm dead", it reads.

Time to open the safe?

"4-32-21, wasn't it? I'll do it."

After unlocking the safe with the numbers that Harry left to whoever found him postmortem, Anabanana looks inside the safe. There is only one item and another note.

The group gathers once again to read the it:

"This here is the Kīla dagger. It straight up kills monsters and other evil stuff. Yeah, yeah, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Ghosts, all that shit, real. Shocker right? If you are looking at this, that means that monsters probably killed me. Either that or my ticker finally exploded. Well, whatever it was, you will probably be needing this more than I do. If you stab a evil thing in the heart this doodad it will kill them and send their spirit back to hell. If you stab a regular person with this, it will just kill them. Risky, I know.

And no, I know what you're thinking, you can't TEST if they are human or monster or whatever. You just gotta take the plunge (pun intended)!

Happy Stabbing,
Harry Boggs
(RIP, I assume. Unless you are stealing this from me, in which case, fuck you.)"

--From here on out the Kīla Dagger will be used by the group for lynchings. Whoever gets the most lynch votes will be stabbed by the group with the Kīla Dagger, which will make it clear whether they were friend or foe. The first person who begins a lynch vote against a successfully lynched player will be the one who personally does the stabbing. If it is a judge lynch a random character will do the stabbing. I will use how gung-ho they are to RP it myself. No one person can HAVE the dagger, it belongs to the group and will never fall into the wrong hands due to its magical properties.--

"So... so he was killed by monsters? I mean, I guess, I guess that makes sense, the way he was... "

Still standing slightly outside the door, she eyes the dagger.

"And now I suppose he wants us to avenge his death."

"Avenge his death? Feh! I'd be more worried about whatever killed him coming after us, if I were you. If he is telling the truth, and not plain insane, that is."

"Maybe I was hoping they had some sort of personal vendetta with him."

She sighs and steps into the room.

"So how do we find these monsters? I mean, a witch or a werewolf or even a zombie would probably look pretty... well, pretty normal, right? Even a ghost might. So do we just look for strange people wandering around and... and stab them?"

"Or I could just stab you all myself," Ana mutters. "That's the only way to be safe, innit? When any of you could be one of them things."

She glares at the rest of the residents, the muscles in her right arm flexing.

From the back of the room Gryff jerks as if startled.

Glaring back at Anabanana, he mutters "Thats a pretty monstrous thing to say, Ana! Maybe we should stab you!"

[Lynch ANABANANA]

We can't afford to wait, it gives the monsters free reign to kill us or. We need clues, and discussion is the way to get those clues. (I am presuming that we are aware IC that there are three members of the monster squad and the player classes mentioned in the game rules)

I should have tagged Anabanana in the previous post. sorry.

"Man, I was just killing time on my computer and then this happens... Okay, I'm now up to speed with the events. You people ought to calm down. We're all afraid but let's not start stabbing each other on impulse, okay?"

[No Lynch] ... In that other forum, you could vote no lynch, can you do that here? Well point is, I don't think we should lynch anyone now.

Gryff sees a notebook in Harry's handwriting, a journal of some kind? It is new and only the first page is filled out.

''12-13-12

Journal Number 5 - I just put the last one in my safety deposit box.

As far as I know, I'm tracking a Vampire, Witch, AND Werewolf! I get the feeling that I may have already met at least one of these guys. Damn sneaky monsters. I'm gonna have to amp up the investation. First I gotta fix that sink in the empty studio so someone can move into it."

You can vote no lynch if you want.

Clink...clink...clink...

"What's everyone doing in he -- HEY!"

The clinking stops as a tall, ponytailed man steps through the doorway. In his hands he clutches a bundled paper bag. One hand slides one side of his headphones away from his ear.

"What happened to Harry?"

"...now let's not be rash." Jacquelle inches toward the door, eyes still on the dagger. "She has a point, you know. Any of us could be a monster. But that's no reason to start turning on each other."

Then she turns to Gryff. "However... if we were turning on each other, I'd be inclined to be, well... a bit suspicious about the first person to suggest backstabbing one of our fellow tenants."

[Lynch GRYFF]

[[OOC: do we tag the people we vote for? If so, @Gryff]]

[[You don't have to tag the people you vote for, but you can if you wanna. It'll summon them to defend themselves at least.]]

"Well, Jacquelle, By your own words you should be voting Anabanana then. After all, she was the one who suggested stabbing us all. In addition she has tried to put us off our guard by suggesting Harry was insane. This could be a monster trying to get a free nights killing in while we all dithered and do foolish things like not lynch someone. We need to be looking at saving the group, not ourselves and the way to do that is by action, not inaction."

Gryff looks around the group, meeting everyones eyes, "I am not important enough that I can't afford to make waves, hence getting this started. Whether you all lynch Ana or me, or even some poor sod who keeps quiet all day, it will give the remaining townies information based on voting arguing and a chance to catch someone in a lie."

With a grim grin, Gryff finishes with "So tell me, where does your vote lie"

Ana bares her teeth in a lop-sided grin.

"I'd like to see you try."

She turns towards Jordan, cracking her knuckles.

"Haaaaaah? No stabbing, ya say? Are you afraid of your true nature being exposed, MONSTER?"

She sneers and points at him.

"I say we stab this bastard. Not stabbing anybody just protects the scum hiding in our midst."

[Lynch jordantigers]

[[OOC: Seriously, no lynch is a bad idea for town.]]

"Oh hey, Gryff, whatcha looking at?"

She saunters over to look at the diary entry.

"So, we have three suckers to root out! And apparently there's some kind of safety deposit box somewhere that we can unlock with these numbers to get Journal Number 4. Has anybody seen anything of the sort around here?"