trial #2

[judgejudy]

DAY 4 (afternoon) Complex Population: 32 At noon, the same tone from the morning rings out, and Judy's voice filters out over the intercom. "Good afternoon, residents. As per Safety Protocol 6227-A, it is time to conduct a trial to bring justice for the victim. Please proceed to the courtroom on the first level." Just as at night, if you don't go to the courtroom, you'll be treated to an electric shock of increasing strength until you go to the courtroom or are unconscious. Though considering the ominous penalty for not participating in a trial, you should likely just go rather than risk not voting because you've been knocked out by your own stubbornness... Once you're in the courtroom, you'll find that bottled water and light snacks are provided, but otherwise you'll have to bring anything else you may need. As you come to your conclusions about who to vote for, you can step into the judgement theater to cast your vote at the terminal. You may change your vote as many times as you'd like, but at 7PM, your vote (or lack thereof) is locked in. You have until 7PM to discuss and vote for who you think the murderer is. — ic rulebook character statuses character profiles Voting will close at 9PM EST on 10/15. voting

Comments

[antietam]

[ At least she's consistent about being kinda crazy... ]

That's hard to narrow down as well, though. Not at lot of people spoke to Charles and not a lot of people spoke to Rayfa. She was our roommate and even I didn't talk to her much, so...

I guess it'd make sense they'd want to target people like that, but it's still hard to gain anything from it.

[karmas]

It's certainly only a small narrowing. But as we don't know how many staff there are, is it not a relevant one?

Here's something else interesting to consider, Adam Parrish. Only two individuals voted last time. If votes are anonymous, I wonder why more of the staff wouldn't have voted, to ensure the right person was selected?

[antietam]

[ He nods, apparently he's thought about that question. ]

I think probably the other staff members didn't know. In my opinion, it implies there's some sort of boss. Someone who knows more—maybe the person who designed this system—than the other staff members who are just working under them.

... It also could be that they have a way of communicating with each other during trials, but that seems difficult to do.

[karmas]

A very good theory. You aren't nearly as brainless as you first appear to be. [High praise???] Indeed - it was clever of the staff to only vote once, as that was all it would take to finish Diva. But, if there was no communication between the staff during the trial, wouldn't we assume all of the staff would undertake the same calculus? Each individual would likely vote for Diva to ensure someone voted for her.

That is, unless: they were communicating during the trial; they had agreed beforehand that if the group would abstain, only one would vote; or they didn't know the votes would be anonymous and one decided to sacrifice themselves.

[antietam]

[ There's a moment of concern. Does he really look dumb? He has to try harder. ]

I think the risk of the votes not being anonymous would be too high. That itself would be interesting—assuming one person did decide to sacrifice themselves, the others clearly didn't. The others would have a higher sense of self-preservation than that one person, who is apparently an anomaly.

Assuming that's the least likely case, it's entirely possible they agreed beforehand. They could have known that abstaining would lead to randomization between members and that would also threaten their lives. We could assume the same might happen in this trial. Besides, if they didn't want us to know how many of them there were, all of them voting would have been stupid since it would have given us a number.

[karmas]

But they did risk randomization. After all, Diva voted for Bigby Wolf. Now, perhaps this was no danger to them, as perhaps Bigby Wolf is also not in the staff.

But! This is not a plan they could have contrived easily beforehand, for the very reason that they could not have predicted no person in the trial wouldn't develop a grudge against one of their own, as Diva developed a grudge against Bigby. If they can't communicate during the trial, the safest plan would be for two to coordinate and both vote for the same person in the event of a vote to abstain. But they didn't do this. And there was no indication anyone was secretly communicating during the trial.

[antietam]

I see. So you think it was unplanned and someone working alone, at least without the consent of the other staff members.

In theory, it might not even have been someone part of the staff.

[karmas]

Can we actually rule out that possibility? It could be that someone didn't want to abstain, but publicly avoided admitting their feelings.

Can we rule out the possibility that all of the staff abstained?

[antietam]

... No, we can't. It's wishful thinking. We're desperate for any leads on how the staff are acting when we could just be seeing the work of someone who was misguided.

[karmas]

But that makes it more interesting, doesn't it?

If the staff did not know whether votes would be anonymous, or if they were somehow required to abstain in the first trial - that would make it important for the staff to try to subtly influence others to vote, wouldn't it?

Why would Her Honor have believed it was possible for everyone to abstain if the staff were able to vote to disrupt a unanimous abstention?

[antietam]

Her Honor? ... Judy?

It could have been a ploy. She's working with the staff in some way. We don't really know how the abstention was supposed to work—it could have randomized the whole pool as the bug. She might have gotten what she wanted by the majority of us choosing to abstain anyway.

But assuming you're right, do you think we can just ask if someone chose to not abstain? If we all can agree that it doesn't automatically make them suspicious. If they aren't staff, maybe they feel guilty and afraid.

[karmas]

Yes. I think, if we can agree voting for Diva and admitting to it does not automatically make someone suspicious, it could bring about more clarity.

[antietam]

... I'll see what I can do. [ He'll go bring that up. ]

[injectors]

Perhaps... the only reason they voted was to avoid Alvin's deal with Judy being fulfilled? And they didn't care about who was selected.

[It's only a theory, but the staff are purposely triggering the trials. They have to know what the risks are.]

Assuming she wasn't deceiving him, if all of us abstained then their numbers would have been revealed. The same would've happen if more of them decided to vote for someone.

[karmas]

Ah, very good. But how did the other staff know which one of them was going to vote?

[injectors]

It's possible they have nonverbal means of communicating with each other during trials. Or they predicted our choice and came to an agreement beforehand. But this is all conjecture.

[karmas]

Then so long as we're engaging in conjecture, consider this. What if the staff could not vote? What if they must abstain? Or at least, in that trial, they needed to abstain.

After all, Her Honor apparently believed it possible that we could have full abstention. Why would she have believed such a thing if the staff were going to vote?

[injectors]

Believed, or purposely made us believe such a thing was possible.

[Either way, they got screwed over... And Diva paid the price for it. Who will be next?]

Are you suggesting, then, that the votes were from individuals who aren't part of the staff?