I agree in either 4 or else 3.

Then A, B and C.

Dunky2012 2023/05/03(Wed)11:46 No. 1062632 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168313960294.png - (29.74KB , 1280x1280 , detective_gun.png )

Time seems to slow down as your mind goes into overdrive to gather as much potentially-life-saving information as it can before it’s too late.

>What can it do?
This…thing doesn’t look like it should be able to exist, but thankfully it seems to follow at least some laws of physics. Its body and legs are fleshy, and do not seem like they could be used as effective weapons. Its mouth on the other hand has sharp teeth in it, angled inwards to prevent escape.

>What’s my best way out?
Your best way out is through. With a wall behind you, a locked door to the side, and this thing blocking the way forwards, you’re glad you brought your pistol.

>Are there any dangers we haven’t noticed?
Somehow, for just a moment, your mind calms, clear of adrenaline. In this calm, you notice that it’s strangely difficult to focus on this thing in front of you, like it’s trying to slip your mind. Luckily, the adrenaline comes crashing back immediately after your observation and you can’t focus on anything but this thing.

>What’s most vulnerable to me?
You notice the splotches of red on the creature are not the blood of its victims, but rather its own blood. There’s a wound on its side, and one near its mouth.

Time’s up, it’s do or die. You take out your pistol, no choice but to fight this thing.
A) Aim for the wound on its side (might hinder its movements or deal more damage, but you might miss as it moves)
B) Aim for the wound by its mouth (might keep its teeth away from you, but might just make it angry)

B) Centre of mass!

B) We might not know if this beast has encountered firearms before, but it is a beast. The fact that it kept its mouth open in front of a human indicates that it has never been shot in the mouth. Even if the internals are armored, this is gonna hurt.

Option 2 - oh, and at this distance just magdump the thing.

1/3 Dunky2012 2023/05/06(Sat)13:45 No. 1062819 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168340593103.png - (91.53KB , 1280x1280 , monster_dead.png )

[Rolling Kick Some Ass: 7+0+1=8 ... Mixed Success!]

As you aim your pistol at its head, the monster lunges forwards. You fire at its mouth, and your bullet goes straight in. Luckily you seem to have hit something vital, as the monster stiffens, its teeth no longer aiming to tear you apart. Unluckily this does not stop the momentum from its lunge, and it barrels right into you, knocking you to the ground and falling on top of you.

[1 Harm taken!]

2/3 Dunky2012 2023/05/06(Sat)13:46 No. 1062820 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168340599684.png - (128.32KB , 1280x1280 , monster_dissolve.png )

As you lie there under the monster, wondering how you’re going to get out from under it, something strange happens. The monster’s corpse seems to fade, or dissolve, and after a few seconds it’s as if it was never there in the first place.

Getting up and looking around you, all that is left in the alley is the now bloodless phone. You’re almost certain it belongs to a late Ann, and one look at its lockscreen background confirms its owner. With a sigh, you prepare yourself to go tell your client the bad news, though you’ll leave out the monster part. Almost nobody would believe you about that.

3/3 Dunky2012 2023/05/06(Sat)13:48 No. 1062821 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168340613841.png - (127.35KB , 1280x1280 , Claire_starry_eyes.png )

“And after enough whiskey from my flask to stop my hands from shaking, I decided I had to come talk to you.”

The day after your first encounter with a monster, you sit at a table in your sister’s apartment, across from Claire Steffson herself. She’s always been a believer in the supernatural, so if anyone would hear you out without calling you crazy, you knew it’d be her. She looks at you, starry eyed and jealous.

“You saw a real, live monster?! And you killed it?!”

“It was that or let it eat me. Besides, it had murdered at least one person already and I have to follow my code, you know that. The guilty must be punished.”

Though, you suppose being captured by the government and experimented on would count as punishment too. After a second your sister seems to accept your reasoning with a sigh. Then with newfound resolve, she stands up and makes a declaration.

“Well, if there was one monster, then there must be more! And I want to see them! So, today shall mark the beginning! We shall join forces, you with your investigative prowess, and me with my knowledge of the supernatural which even you now admit exists. We shall become monster hunters! What do you say, Detective?”

A) Join your sister and hunt monsters (actively seek out the supernatural)
B) Don’t hunt monsters, that’s dangerous (let the supernatural come to you, whether you want it to or not)

B) Look, hunting monsters is super badass, but bills got to be paid and the monsters aint going to do that. You'll just deal with them as you encounter them

>>1062822
This.
You'd be happy to work with her if another such case presents itself though, because you don't have eyes behind your head.

(Well, you could say it was a strange animal that killed her and that would technically be the truth. Just lie that you didn't get a good look at it - but nothing human makes noises like it did. Still, you're pretty sure you fatally wounded it, so city sanitation can clean up the mess.)

Woah, woah, woah, hang on for a sec sis. Just because I ran across one monster in my whole life does not mean we'll suddenly find lots even if we do attempt to dig them up. Second, while dealing with these things would be a public service, it won't pay bills. Even if we did go ghostbusters, we have no way of knowing if we'll get enough business to buy food. Seriously, what are we going to do, sell their organs to...? Wait a second... Perhaps if we research these beasts we could replicate their abilities scientifically... it would pay bills and do good... but that would still hinge on us finding even one. Who's to say the next one won't vanish like this one? Plus the research might take years to pay off. Of course, that also assumes we don't get killed. Simply too many unknowns. Look, how about this. We won't quit the day jobs. On our offtime though, we could review unusual activities. Should we happen to find a thing close by that I can give no rational explanation for and seems like we can handle ourselves, we'll go. Once we have something solid, we'll consider next steps. Jumping in recklessly will just hurt or kill us.

B. You face enough danger in your line of work.

1/2 Dunky2012 2023/05/11(Thu)14:14 No. 1063477 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168383969263.png - (101.44KB , 1280x1280 , d_steffson_boring.png )

“I’m not quitting my job to become a monster hunter, Claire. I have bills to pay and a life to live.”

With those words, your sister immediately deflates, ending with her head resting on the table.

“Boo, you’re no fun. You’re the boring twin, with your boring rational thought and sensible decisions.”

Gotta have something to differentiate the two of you. Though, since you’re also the nice twin, you decide to throw her a bone.

“...Perhaps, if on the off-chance a case of mine has some aspect I can’t boringly explain, I might tell you about it. Maybe.”

And she’s back to smiling. This should be enough to keep her from doing something stupid like trying to hunt monsters on her own, at least. With that matter settled, the two of you spend the rest of the day simply chatting and catching up.

Introduction Mystery Complete!
2 Experience gained
1 Harm healed

2/2 Dunky2012 2023/05/11(Thu)14:15 No. 1063478 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168383975340.png - (329B , 1280x1280 , unknown_location.png )

The screen shuts off. You cannot see it, but two figures stand in a room.

“Phase one is a success.”

“Yes, luckily. Is this really the best plan? It’s already almost failed a few times.”

“This was the most uncertain part. We’re past it now, so things should run smoothly going forwards.”

“And if it fails?”

“We find another, and begin again.”

Short break while I set stuff up for the first proper mystery, which will still be in this thread. It will start with a summary of your stats and moves and etc.

Dunky2012 2023/05/19(Fri)21:32 No. 1064176 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168455713301.png - (55.53KB , 1280x1280 , introspection.png )

You are D. Steffson, a gumshoe in the big city. And a monster hunter on your off-hours, apparently. You would brush it off as a vaguely harmless way to spend time with your twin sister, Claire Steffson, but you unfortunately know that monsters are real. Your first encounter with the supernatural went fairly well, with you only sustaining minor injuries and the monster dead and dissolved. Before you start your day, you decide to take stock of yourself.

First and foremost, your Gumshoe Code. Without this, you wouldn’t be a gumshoe. Break it, and it won’t be just your morale that breaks with it. Keep it, and you keep your credentials.
[While keeping your code you have +1 ongoing to Manipulate Someone, and immunity to possession and charm effects. Break your code and you lose these benefits until you make amends.]

Your Gumshoe Code is: The guilty must be punished.

Next you look inside yourself. If you were to rate different aspects of yourself on a -1 to +1 basis, it’d probably be something like this:
Charm: +1 (Your investigations have given you plenty of practice in dealing with people.)
Cool: -1 (You’ve gotten used to your mundane, unexciting career. Too used to it, and now you have trouble dealing with unusual and stressful situations.)
Sharp: +2 (Yes, this is higher than +1. You are very proud of your intellect.)
Tough: 0 (You can fight, but you’d much prefer not to.)
Weird: +1 (If your intellect isn’t enough to solve a case, you often make progress when you Trust Your Gut.)

Other notable things about you… well, there’s some.

You’re a pretty quick thinker and analyzer, sometimes it feels like time slows down in stressful situations.
[Move - Occult Confidential: The first time you encounter a supernatural creature, location, or phenomenon you will be prompted to choose one question from Investigate a Mystery to get an answer to.]

You’ve gotten a lot of scrapes and bruises over the years, so you know how to take and treat injuries while minimizing damage.
[Move - Asphalt Jungle: Any time you heal, heal 1 additional harm. Suffer less consequences from taking harm.]

Over the years you’ve built up a web of connections. People you trade info and favors with. There’s bartenders, a good source of the latest gossip and a great source for drinks. Journalists tend to know about the bigger rumors going on, and will sometimes buy stories off of you. Then there’s medical practitioners; a few previous cases helped you gain their trust, and now they don’t ask where your bruises came from, or whose blood is on your coat on those rare occasions. Finally there’s the local police, who you’ve worked with on many cases before. They sometimes hire you for a cold case they think you could solve better than them.
[Move - The Naked City: You can go to your contacts for information, giving +1 to an Investigate a Mystery roll, or for small favors. You will have to pay a small fee for either option, and usually not in cash.]

For gear, you have a laptop, your trusty flask, a night vision camera, a digital sound recorder, and your gun.

Done with your self-checkup, you sigh and look out the window. It’s been a week since you encountered that monster, and there’s been nothing since. No monsters, and no regular cases either. You’ve learned that in dry spells like this, you need to actively search for cases to keep your income steady. You can weather it for a while longer, but it’s best not to procrastinate too long on these things. There’s plenty of mysteries to be solved in this city, you just need to find them if they won’t knock on your door.

Where do you go?
A) Police department (maybe you can convince them to pay you for a cold case)
B) Claire’s apartment (she might have a lead on something supernatural, though probably nothing profitable)
C) See if your contacts have any leads on a case (specify which kind of contact, though local police is covered by option A)
D) Trust Your Gut (roll +Weird; you could wander straight into a high-paying mystery, or straight to your doom)
E) Other places that probably exist in a big city (it’s a whole city, there’s definitely more than four places in it, maybe even more than five!)

A) you're the responsible siblings after all.

C) Check in with some journalists

I wanna say B, if only because your sister has probably either found something that could explain what the heck that thing you shot was and/or where it came from, or she's found someone who can tell you that. You want to be absolutely sure that everyone who earned a smack in that affair gets one...

I mean defaulting to the law is appropriate since you're the "responsible" sister so you need to do thing by the book.

Dunky2012 2023/05/29(Mon)21:07 No. 1064779 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168541966558.png - (83.41KB , 1280x1280 , officer_sue_smirk.png )

You decide to go bother some cops at the nearby police station. They don’t give you any especially exciting cases, and they don’t pay much unless you actually solve them, but at least there’s consistently cases for you to work on.

After a brief walk through the city, you enter the police station and are greeted by Officer Sue Wine.

“Morning, Detective. Ya here for business or pleasure?”

You don’t know why she thinks it’s funny to say that every time you come here, but that’s a mystery you don’t really feel like solving.

A) Get right to business and ask if there are any cold cases you can try (Begin Mystery 01: The Locked Room Murders)
B) Small talk about the city before getting to business (Random miscellaneous info that may or may not relate to mysteries. Will immediately segue into A afterward)
C) Change your mind and go somewhere else (Specify where from last update’s options)
D) Other (Suggest some other option)

A)There's money to be made

Exhaust small talk before accepting story quest.

B, of course. The more responsible sibling, you may be, but you're not a total wet blanket. (Of course, you say that, but this is really just casting your net for every scrap of intel you can get; you never know what might turn out to be important...)

B

1/2 Dunky2012 2023/05/30(Tue)21:42 No. 1064852 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168550814755.png - (57.53KB , 1280x1280 , officer_wine_small_talk.png )

You engage in some clue gathering polite small talk with Officer Wine.

[Rolling Small Talk Snippets...]

“I’ve been having trouble finding reading material ever since the library closed for renovations.”

“I haven’t been to the boardwalk since I was a kid. Maybe I should go again sometime.”

“You should check out this quest; it’s about a fox that likes to party and a fairy learning to fit in with human society.”

2/2 Dunky2012 2023/05/30(Tue)21:43 No. 1064854 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168550821288.png - (69.16KB , 1280x1280 , the_locked_room_murders.png )

Having filled your quota of inane chatter for the day, you move on to business. When you ask if there are any cases for you to solve, Officer Wine smirks.

“Actually, we’ve got something special for ya. Gimme a sec, I’ll go get the reports.”

She leaves the room and after a couple minutes comes back with three sets of papers, which she hands over to you.

“There’s some serial killer or something, but we’ve been having trouble finding a pattern in these. Same cause of death, similar situation, but the choice of victim seems completely random. See if you can find something in these files for us.”

A) Take the files back to your office
B) Ask Officer Wine a question

B) Any connection in locations?

B) give me a rundown on the victims. Where are they before they death how were they killed, ect.

1/2 Dunky2012 2023/06/06(Tue)17:02 No. 1065255 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168609614354.png - (66.41KB , 1280x1280 , victims.png )

“And there’s no connection between the locations, either?” you ask.

“Nope. Three different parts of the city, only two of them residences, no weird positional code as far as we could tell.”

“I see. And could you give me a quick rundown of the victims?”

“Sure, though the files will have more details. There’s Dr. Brian Hunter, a historian and professor from a wealthy family who was found dead in his manor. Then there was Jack Crane, a school librarian at City High, found dead in said high school’s library. Finally there’s Beth Heathers, an office worker found dead in her home.”

You thank Officer Wine and head back to your office with the files.

2/2 Dunky2012 2023/06/06(Tue)17:02 No. 1065256 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168609616695.png - (108.44KB , 1280x1280 , outside_the_office.png )

When you reach the building your office is in, you see Claire standing on the sidewalk and leaning against the wall. She sees you as you walk over and she smiles and waves at you.

“Hey! I came all this way to tell you about something I found, but it seems you have some of your boring work so I won’t bother you. I will be coming to hang out in your office though, because I’m bored.”

A) Get right into reading those files (It will take a while to read through them all)
B) Ask how your sister’s been doing, and tell her about your new case (She will be annoying, as siblings are, but maybe she’ll have something interesting to say)
C) Tell Claire to go away (The mean option. She will leave for now, but she will remember this)

B) Not really a rush to read those files, not like a cold case is going to get much colder

A.

Guess I'll be tiebreaker here, option 2.

Honestly, I don't see why we would ever want to shoo her away unless she like consistently leads us astray, and it's way too early for any pattern like that to have formed.

I say invite her in but start with A: We'll want to have all the facts available before we start soundboarding off each other.

Tie again so B just to prove we aren't a sick in the mud.

1/2 Dunky2012 2023/06/15(Thu)13:40 No. 1065917 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168686164622.png - (76.85KB , 1280x1280 , claire_interest_ranking.png )

You and your sister go inside and into your office. Claire flops down on the sofa and you sit at your desk. There isn’t a pressing need or time limit to read the files, so you decide to have a short chat first.

“How’ve you been this past week?”

“I’ve been snooping around the city, trying to find signs of the supernatural. There’s a hall of mirrors down by the port that seems promising. How about you, what kinda case did you end up with?”

“Serial killer, apparently. I’ll be looking through the files to try and find something to track them with.”

“That sounds somewhat interesting. Not as much as a hall of mirrors, but more than sitting on a couch and doing nothing, so I hope you don’t mind if I read over your shoulder.”

2/2 Dunky2012 2023/06/15(Thu)13:41 No. 1065918 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168686168422.png - (27.46KB , 1280x1280 , three_files.png )

Sighing, you look back to the files, giving them each a quick once-over.

[Rolling Investigate a Mystery: 7+2=9 ... Mixed Success!]

Choose ONE of these questions:
1) What happened here?
2) What sort of creature is it?
3) What can it do?
4) What can hurt it?
5) Where did it go?
What was it going to do? (It already happened.)
6) What is being concealed here?

And choose one of the files to investigate more closely:
A) Dr. Brian Hunter, Professor
B) Jack Crane, Librarian
C) Beth Heathers, Office Worker

5) Seems to be the most actionable, though not the most helpful
B) Always been told to go to the library to find info anyways

The police have already exhausted the avenues for figuring out how the killer got in or how they got out - we know whoever or whatever killed these people has some way of circumventing that, so let's instead focus on an angle the police might have missed amidst all this locked-room hullabaloo: 2 - What sort of creature is it? Maybe there's traces of something in the report that doesn't make sense, but it got overlooked in the rush to solve the locked aspect of it all - or maybe your sister has some insight on what can perpetrate a locked-room murder?

Focus on A, the Professor - if we want to find anything resembling a motive or smoking gun, it'll be with the first guy to provoke whoever or whatever is doing this.

2 and a

Well, while 2 or 3 would probably solve the locked room issue, it'll matter little without a means to kill the thing - especially if it created the rooms via intangibility of sorts. Got to go with 4 on this. Study the professor - perhaps being a man of wits he left a clue about the one responsible for his death.

3, failing that, 2.
B) let's see that librarian.

Dunky2012 2023/06/28(Wed)19:50 No. 1066799 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168800703413.png - (94.91KB , 1280x1280 , natasha_hallway.png )

>2A

Might as well start with the start, and read the professor’s file. Looks like the biggest part of it is this interview with the person who found the body...

...

You are Natasha Anne, the head maid of Professor Hunter’s manor. It’s late in the evening, close to night, almost time for your shift to end. You only need to do one last check that all the tasks that needed to be done today have been completed. You need to make sure the kitchen is clean and the security alarms are set. Oh, you should probably also make sure the Professor isn’t still in his study once you’ve taken care of the official things. He tends to stay up all night unless someone reminds him to go to bed.

What do you do?

Probably get cleaning done first. to the kitchen!

Checking out the security system seems important

Start with the security system, then get to cleaning. Making sure the master of the house has turned in is something you save for when you're about to clock out.

Dunky2012 2023/07/05(Wed)18:48 No. 1067160 ID: 2f7f6e
File 168860811120.png - (94.92KB , 1280x1280 , every_hallway_needs_a_clock.png )

You decide to set the alarms first. It would be a shame if some burglar were to sneak in while you check the kitchen, after all. The controls for the security system aren’t too far so you reach it quickly enough, setting the alarms to keep the place safe.

You’re suddenly hit with a wave of tiredness. You must be getting old, you used to stay up much later than this doing your job. Oh well, you only have one more thing to do before you can wish the Professor a good night and get yourself some well deserved rest.

Check in on the professor and see if he needs to get booted into bed

Well check if the professor needs anything before going to bed the cleaning can come tomorrow.