WEEK 3

[whimsicalism]

All three deaths last were tragic in their own ways. Was trust so fragile in that castle that a simple misunderstanding could end in blood? It seemed to be the case. The trial proved that without a doubt. Surely no one else would make that mistake again. As another week begins the tea cup elevator has granted access to a new area. Maybe the new amusements of a festival will ease your wounded hearts?

Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

[It's time for week three! We're almost half-way done with our trip in the castle. Don't forget to submit your memories here and your activity here. Even though, the Queen seems to be a little more steady on her feet you can find her and the other Alice at the audience hall. As always, don't forget to submit your comments for fabulous prizes.]

Comments

MEETING

[littlebratziska]

[In a twist, it's Franziska who calls a meeting today, despite not being officially in charge of anything. She is in charge in her heart, and that's what matters, or something?

After putting up several flyers done in glitter pen with colored pencil embelishments and telling several others she is waiting in the library at the appointed time, sitting on the edge of one of the tables with her feet swinging loosely off the edge.]

Is everybody here? I thought it would be best to come together and talk about all the things we've found this week, with a whole new area open, and besides, I have a theory, and I want to know what everyone thinks of it.

We all know what happened last week. I hope that no one is going to try and take the Alices up on their offer again, especially after how Coriander was punished, and how quickly she was caught, but I guess someone might be tempted.

[Though to her mind wealth is a pretty poor temptation. Of course, she's never been poor.]

Just remember it's pointless to try and win any riches if you're killed for what you've done before you can do anything with them! If anyone does decide to try anything, I'll make sure they don't get away with it. And if you see someone acting suspiciously, remember what happened last week as well! We need to trust each other at least enough to try and find out more information, so that nobody else dies because of a misunderstanding.

Now to what happened to Veronia.

Please, think before you act! I don't think killing Alice will do anything, even if we can. She's told us already that she's already dead. I'm almost positive that the purpose of this game is to bring her back to life, and I think she knows it too, by now, though she said she didn't at first. That is what my theory comes down to, however. I think most of us saw that Alice's arm shattered like it was made of china, or of glass when Veronica tried to stab her with her knife. I think most of us also heard when Ib was killed that the Queen's Glass Game is what's supposedly going to bring us back to life.

When Dark Dream and I were investigating Room 29 last week, all the furniture was broken apart and cut up with knives, but there wasn't any portrait and weren't any other signs of who had lived there, but the bookmark that opened the door did have a pattern that seemed to relate to Alice, and two people were apparently sleeping in that room, just like Alice sleeps now in the same place as the cat. She was originally introduced as the Queen. It seems possible that the game we're playing now is the glass game - glass breaks easily, and the point of the game is for us to be killed. If that's the case then Alice might have been another participant, and the promised way she is being brought back to life is through the deaths of all of us.

She said that's not true when I asked her, that the glass game turns back the hands of the clock to bring us back and nothing else, but we can turn back the clock already, and it has sometimes echoed the events of the past, but it has not brought anyone back to life, so I feel like it's still a point worth considering.

CLUE DISCUSSION

[littlebratziska]

[strictura]

I picked up the broken pieces and can confirm they're a type of ceramic and not glass, so I think that part of the connection might be a stretch, though I'm not necessarily ruling it out.

That's definitely interesting about the room, though. Maybe they used to stay in a normal room like everyone else and moved to the audience hall for better security after being attacked in the previous round?

[ If that's the case, he can't really fault them for it, especially since Alice just got attacked again immediately upon leaving her quarters... ]

...Anyway, Mikuni-san and I tried winding back the clock again early this week, and were able to hear another past incident. Two people were murdered at the festival on the second floor, and then the murderer was killed by someone else who showed up and saw what had happened. [ A glance to Oriko; he'll let her bring up her connection to Sayaka if she wants to. ] Presumably that person would have been found guilty and executed for her involvement.

One of the original victims in that incident was Anna Sasaki, whose room I investigated during the first week. The festival area matched up with one of the drawings I'd found in her room then, though there are other drawings of places that still aren't recognizable -- a hall of mismatched doors, and some kind of snowy scene. It's possible that those could also be places on the other floors of the castle that we haven't accessed yet, and if that's the case, it might be helpful for working out a timeline of when some of these deaths occurred, since she'd only have been able to draw places she'd gained access to.

[ They may not need a timeline of the previous round's events, but it would be nice to have anyway. ]

[ballooncaged]

Yeah, uh—

[Mizuki whips out Veronica's knife like so.]

In what universe is glass dust white like this? Cat boy land?

[More importantly...]

But there was a portrait in Anna's room. So now we know that the portraits being blank on the back doesn't mean they weren't involved in a case... right?

[nothingposh]

Glass is the same thing as China, though. The difference is just what you make them from.

[This is actually the case traditionally. Glass was considered a type of ceramic.]

[littlebratziska]

[Well she didn't know that but it seems to strengthen her case, and she definitely perks up just a bit in interest.]

[ballooncaged]

...what?

[She... can vaguely follow the reasoning that they're similar processes of heating or whatever, but she hasn't heard it put this way explicitly before. Some real pearls from swine here.]

Still, does that mean "glass game" means "fragile game"? It could mean transparent game, or... if China counts, then "container game".

[strictura]

They seem similar, but they're typically classified differently because glass has no ordered molecular structure, while ceramics are crystalline.

...Admittedly, the Alices probably wouldn't look at anything from a scientific standpoint.

[battlestations]

That reminds me, I found some white powder in another strange place myself. The inside of the teacup elevator door.... and that door is completely beaten up. Someone slammed it several times. I'd bet my giant ruby someone died there, as well.

[strictura]

Do you think the Queen was involved in whatever struggle took place there, then?

[ He almost wonders if it wasn't another punishment instead of a murder. ]

[littlebratziska]

Hm, interesting.

There is still the point that glass breaks easily, and that we are supposed to be killed - or broken, if you prefer - in this game as well.

I tried to use the clock to look at what happened in room 29, but it wouldn't let me.

[She scowls a little at that, clearly taking it a little personally.]

No one actually died in that room, you could tell that much from the amount of blood, but someone certainly tried to kill someone else in there; most of the knives they threw are still stuck in the walls, though they seem to have pulled out two to chase whoever they were trying to kill.

A timeline of what happened here before us might be useful, if for no other reason than to try and see the rate at which people died, and if it started to speed up.

The clock not working for room 29 might be another point for that having been Alice's room though. As far as we've seen she is supposed to be in charge, and maybe it doesn't work because she doesn't want us poking around in her old room and learning too much by rewinding.

[golden_king]

Hmm...a timeline?

Well maybe something I found will help. Over at the arcade I found tire tracks leading to the platform games - someone named Putt-Putt also was playing them, apparently.

Oh and then I checked out Dani's room, who so happened to be sharing a room with me. I'm not going to explain how everything looked so you guys get to look another way.

[ He took a photo of the state of the room. Also there's probably the brick wall in place of the window in the room now. But there are at least before and after pictures. One picture with window of American house and one with illusion obviously dispelled with the brick wall of the castle. ]

I broke the window and it looks like they're using illusion magic to make it appear like a familiar place to us is outside. I mean we obviously knew it was fake but it never hurts to confirm.

Oh yeah! There's this too. It looks like Dani died in the seventh week because Mikhail fell on her after dying mid flight. Jeez these guys were pretty hopeless...

[ Here's another picture of the portrait on his phone because he's not going to summarize all that which he thought was unnecessary. ]

[imozon]

Franziska and I found a brick wall behind the window in room 29, too.

Can you still get into your room?

[imozon]

If you go up on the Ferris wheel you can see a forest. Do you think that might be the Nameless Forest?

[littlebratziska]

That makes as much sense as anything. Was there anything else you could see about it?

[imozon]

Just that the trees looked really close together.

--Oh! Do you know what this is?

[She holds up a shirt, clearly much too small for her, with a platypus on it.]

[xxxx_me]

I rewound the time and found a murder scene on the second floor, in the picnic area. There were a lot of voices, but they mentioned a lot of names, too.

One called another blondie, and someone else scolded them... so I think Maria was blonde? And Kure was the person who said blondie. The boy who found Lillie and Catarina came running and yelling their names, so it was Kirika, Sayaka, and Maria together. The boy was Oliver, and he was talking about Nanako - she ate some doughnuts Viola made and something bad happened to her. And then they got worried about Mikhail because he ate them too, and Esther, and something came crashing down from the sky and they yelled at Dani to get out of the way.

[Heeeeee thinks that's all the names, at least.]

I found a bunch of stuff belonging to them, too, so I checked out Viola's room. I found this inside.

[He'll show them the portrait and note.]

...

I tried asking Cheshire Alice about the Storyteller. She said that it's a title of someone like her, and a dangerous one to just go around saying, but when I asked if the Storyteller was the one who led the last group of kids the way she's leading us through trials and things, she said it's too early to say. She said... we're all just books in our own ways, because we have beginnings, middles, and ends.

[Though it's clear from his tone he doesn't agree.]

[nothingposh]

Well, that's just silly. I ain't from a book. It's an opera.

[Modern musical theatre is a little after his time.]

[xxxx_me]

...Huh?

[undershadow]

So the Cat and the Storyteller are definitely two different people? [ She says, after perusing the note. ] Because it sounds like they're on the same page.

[xxxx_me]

I think so... she wouldn't tell me much about them, because it's "too early." She said to ask about it later.

FREE DISCUSSION

[littlebratziska]

[immaculacies]

Um... This isn't really a clue or anything, but when I was investigating the festival stalls, I found this.

[ Manaka places down a bottle with a big ol' novelty skull-and-crossbones poison symbol on it. It's empty. ]

I wasn't really sure what to do with it, so I took it back to my room and poured it out in the bathroom... Ah, but the point is, there might be stuff like this left around, so we should all be careful about that!

[littlebratziska]

[Well that's. Concerning.]

Does that mean all the food up there isn't safe, do you think? I think most of us have already eaten some of it....

[immaculacies]

Mm... Well, it's probably not safe to eat food that's just been left sitting out for who knows how long, anyway. But I threw out the contaminated stuff I found—oh, did you know that it seems like the food in the stalls doesn't rot? I found raw chicken left out in the doughnut stall, along with the stuff this had been used on.