Argh… XD
Ronove never acknowledged anyone other than the Beatrice who appeared in the last chapter as Beatrice. And as I said: This Beatrice didn’t exist in the mansion during the previous chapters. There is no human, Servant or demi-Servant who has donned that name and would have been acknowledged by Ronove.
There! Ronove as an accomplice debunked! I hope you are happy now! XD
I could continue arguing about the definition of Beatrice, but I have a feeling that’s probably not the way you want this to go.
Mashu stealthily gave Nitocris the key at some point before they separated to search the floor in pairs. Nitocris unlocked the door to Ritsuka’s bedroom in the brief span of time she was outside the bedroom Battler was investigating. Unlocking a door should be such a short process that she would have enough time to do so without arousing suspicion, as the bedrooms are next door to each other.
Go on then, what do you think happened then? I’m curious!
Hmm, I just realized that there was a prior red stating that Ritsuka left the room when Mashu and Ronove were in some bedroom, so I suppose that Ritsuka left the room during the whole “the witch is totally taking the corpse to the attic oh no” -debacle and was murdered afterwards, or possibly committed suicide is not going to work. Fair enough. This can be made to work in a different way.
Mashu left the key somewhere Robin Hood could go grab it and go unlock the door. They could leave the room while the others were searching for the culprit. Either they were murdered by Nitocris while Battler and Mashu were in the attic, or they were murdered by either Mashu or Nitocris after Battler and Mashu had returned from the attic, or perhaps they committed suicide.
I’m afraid in my timezone it has become quite late and I have to go get a bit of sleep. I am actually saddened that you have given up on your previous tangent because I wanted to end this in a bang, a bang that will now be a bit subdued, because saying A Servant needs corporeal form to take and carry a key. would be a little too easy in order to debunk your theory and it would just invite you try to wiggle your way around semantics.
Oh well, let’s go for the broad strokes regardless:
Going by lore, Mashu would never kill Ritsuka.
Obviously, that includes assisting someone in such a kill.
Good night then, I will return in a few hours and see whether you have managed to go for the kill. 
Actually, it’s 1:50 here so I suppose I’ll be heading off as well.
Well, after some quick last thoughts.
A servant needing a corporeal form to carry a key is no problem at all. Robin could’ve just left the room incorporeal, become corporeal and taken the key, and unlocked the door from the outside. There’s no need for him to take the key inside the locked room in order to unlock it, so that red does nothing to deny my theory about Robin opening the door.
From my limited knowledge on F/GO, I did think that Mashu killing Ritsuka was a bit weird. In any case, that red is not really a problem. Mashu participated in the plan believing that it was just playacting. She wasn’t the one who killed Ritsuka, and she never found out that Ritsuka had actually been killed.
Ah, sorry for the delay. Had a busy morning. So… I am back again and… even though it is kinda anticlimactic, I begin my turn by just letting your blue stand. Because it doesn’t harm me, after all you haven’t named the true culprit, how the murder happened or where the murder weapon went.
My (sincere) advice: Try to formulate a narrative that would explain all the happenings in one go instead of getting side-tracked by details. I believe if you do that, you’ll see easily which parts of your theory are possible and in which parts there is still an error.
I am genuinely surprised the discussion of this gameboard went as long as it did.^^ Do you go easy on me here?
I went into this under the assumption that the mystery would be extremely simple, which is why I started theorizing after briefly reading through the narrative once and quickly rechecking a key point or two. As a result I was somewhat hazy on a number of details, opting on letting the reds guide my way instead of taking my time rereading through the story until I remembered everything properly. With my blues, I decided to focus on a single theory instead of branching out early on because if the mystery really was trivial, the most simple solution would most likely be correct. In responding to your reds, I responded with what immediately came to my mind instead of taking a step back and evaluating things in detail. So, it wasn’t as much a conscious choice to go easy on you, but rather me playing a sloppy game because I was expecting next to no resistance. The clock being past midnight might also have played a part.
I started writing post where I went through the whole thing in detail, but it started turning out way longer than I expected and I didn’t have the time to go through the whole thing, so I decided to cut to the chase and just give you the repeat requests and blues to spare time.
Repeat this in red. It is impossible for living corporeal beings to leave Ritsuka and Robin’s bedroom when its door is locked and the window bars are intact. The window bars stayed intact from the beginning of the story until Ritsuka’s body left the room.
Regarding how the Ritsuka’s body left the bedroom:
This is unlikely, but I want to close off this possiblity for good. Mashu unlocked the door to Ritsuka and Robin’s bedroom before she ran to the attic. Perhaps she did this right after the door was locked by Ronove, perhaps she managed to accomplish this while the four on the second room were splitting into pairs, or perhaps she just plain left Ronove on his own for a while to unlock the door and then returned back to the study.
Also, I’ll restate this in blue for posterity. Mashu left the key in some place where Robin could pick it up and go unlock the door to the crime scene.
Alternatively, Robin chopped Ritsuka’s body into pieces and disposed of them through the window.
Regarding how Ritsuka died (if he wasn’t already dead):
After the door was unlocked by either Mashu or Robin, Ritsuka, who had previously only played dead, went to the attic. There, while preparing to set the stage for the next part of their murder mystery play, he opened the window and accidentally fell through it, dying.
Alternatively, Ritsuka went to some empty room to wait until Mashu and Battler went to the attic. He was killed in that room by either Nitocris or Robin while Battler and Mashu were away.
Regarding how Robin died:
Robin was killed by Nitocris during the night. This assumes Mashu was the one who unlocked the door for Ritsuka to use, which seems very unlikely, but I’ll leave this here anyway.
Robin was either killed by Nitocris when Mashu and Battler were in the attic, he was killed by Mashu when Mashu stayed in Ritsuka’s bedroom after returning from the attic when everyone else had already went downstairs, or he committed suicide.
I’m afraid I don’t have time for anything better than that for now. Any combination of those blues that doesn’t directly contradict each other presents a scenario that could explain the main points of the incident, as far as I am aware.
Still thanks for taking your time. Though I must admit I am a little confused. Since when is it the witch’s job to pick out the correct blue truths from a batch of conflicting ideas? I… cannot possibly surrender when you don’t pick a theory and stay with it, you know.^^
Fine… I’ll take it as a challenge anyway. You want me to repeat an assurance? Of course: It is impossible for living corporeal beings to leave Ritsuka and Robin’s bedroom when its door is locked and the window bars are intact. The window bars stayed intact from the beginning of the story until Ritsuka’s body left the room.
Now to your blue truths…
While they were searching the first floor, Mashu was under constant supervision by Ronove. She couldn’t have sneaked away during any of this.
After Ritsuka and Robin went to bed the day before, Robin never left the room until the moment he died.
You, Sir, have a very sick mind! But just to be thorough: Ritsuka’s corpse is nowhere in the rose garden either! The rose garden means the grounds surrounding the mansion. And that includes the spot beneath the window of Ritsuka’s room.
Nah, Ritsuka had no reason to open the window.
I think I was pretty clear that there are only the rooms mentioned in the story on the first floor. Therefore if he had snuck anywhere else, he would have run into the groups searching those rooms.
Allow me to devastate all your theories:
Nitocris didn’t kill anyone!
(within the murder mystery that is, Shuten Douji doesn’t count)
You can still claim that Mashu killed Robin later on, but then you run into trouble explaining how the nightly murder was possible. As you asked me to repeat, There is no way to leave a room with a corporeal body once the door is locked and the chain is set.
Mashu has only a corporeal body and no way to change into spirit form.
Therefore it would be impossible for her to create the locked room!
The reason I wrote my blues like that was to avoid repetition. I could’ve used those same building blocks to write like 12 different lengthier blues that share the same basic ideas except in different combinations, but that felt inefficient.
While I still don’t believe this is the solution, the red about Mashu being under constant supervision while they were searching the first floor does not cover the period of time right after they left the crime scene but before they split up into groups to search for the culprit. Also, wasn’t the search done on the second floor? I thought there was the ground floor, the second floor, and the attic. In any case, you could always deny this possibility outright by simply stating Mashu did not unlock the door to Ritsuka’s bedroom before Ritsuka’s body left the bedroom after the bedroom door was locked by Ronove. I wonder if you’ve neglected doing so on purpose.
Robin never leaving the room until the moment he died is interesting. Just to engage in some superfluous nitpicking, I might as well ask you to confirm that “the moment Robin died” is not a timespan long enough to go outside and unlock the door.
Ritsuka’s corpse is not in the rose garden? Fair enough. The bedroom includes a bathroom and Robin actually washed the tiny pieces of his corpse down the drain. If at first you don’t succeed, just go sicker.
Right now, I don’t have any blue standing that would explain how Ritsuka left the room, so this is not really that meaningful to bring up at this point in time, but regarding the rooms he could’ve gone to should he have left the room, isn’t there a third bedroom that was unoccupied? The narration never mentioned that the bedroom of Mashu and Nitocris was investigated, so he could’ve gone there and be murdered there, but the current reds seem to block that possibility in other ways.
Nitocris not killing anyone is pretty severe indeed. Severe enough to give me a reason to reconsider some base assumptions. Right now, both the death of Ritsuka and his body leaving the bedroom are sealed behind a fairly solid-looking wall of red. So, let’s circumvent the entire issue. Repeat in red: The deaths of Ritsuka and Robin refer to physical death, not a death of personality or anything else that could be referred to as “death” which still allows their physical body to move around on its own volition.
Also, regarding Robin’s death, which I would assume is an actual death, Robin was killed by Mashu during the night. Nitocris simply opened the door to her and created the closed room after she had left.
Additionally, just in case nothing above sticks… repeat it in red: Robin was not resummoned after his death. It would be devious if Robin had actually died, but then was resummoned for the purposes of escaping the closed room. And then died again somehow. I don’t quite know how summoning Servants in F/GO works, so maybe resummoning like this would not be possible in the first place.
I believe that’s just a translation thing. I’m using British conventions, meaning there is a ground floor, a first floor and an attic, nothing more.
I didn’t do that on purpose, I just thought it pointless because you’d just wiggle yourself around such a red truth like you always do, instead of searching for valid alternatives.^^
That I can do easily: Robin died instantly and evaporated without being able to do any further action.
He doesn’t have ‘Battle Continuation’ and can’t pull a Cu on you here.
You are just Bernkastel in disguise, aren’t you? I already created a red that prevented the use of magic to destroy the corpse, so to make matters more easy, I’ll expand it: Ritsuka’s corpse was not destroyed and is still in one piece. Just spirited away by Beatrice, ha!
I don’t believe I mentioned any other room on that floor than the following ones:
I’ve already stated in red that those present in the text are the only rooms. It’s a tiny tiny mansion.^^
Mashu and Ronove started with the study, while Battler and Nitocris started with the room of Elizabeth and Ibaraki. Those rooms were completely searched, no body, dead or alive, existed there. Then Battler and Nitocris went to the room of Mashu and Nitocris. Nobody entered the room of Elizabeth and Ibaraki after they left it. But you are right with one point! Battler never finished his search of Mashu and Nitocris’ room. But I want to make it as clearly as possible: He was still able to look at all places where someone could hide and there was no corpse anywhere to be found. Of course After Mashu went up the stairs until she returned with Battler, Nitocris and Ronove remained together in the corridor. They would have been able to see anyone trying to go past them.
No problem at all: The deaths of Ritsuka and Robin refer to physical death or death to the Servant vessel in Robin’s case. Like you say, the latter is technically a ghost who can be summoned a limitless number of times, so his case is indeed a bit tricky, so I make it as clear as possible: Robin’s spirit core broke, causing his death. He was not resummoned afterwards.
Well, according to the tutorial when Ritsuka isn’t using the magic circle in Chaldea, he can use Mashu’s shield as a makeshift summoning point as far as I can remember. In any case, for this story it is not important. Robin is gone for good.
Now this is the only tricky thing despite my very straight-forward premise: After dinner ended, Mashu and Nitocris went directly to their rooms. Afterwards Nitocris never left this room up until the next morning!
I’m curious how you want to explain the closed room murder with only Mashu entering! She couldn’t leave afterwards, but obviously Battler ran into her outside the room the next morning.
Oh, I only wiggle where you leave me room. If I make a theory about Mashu opening the lock, stating a couple of times when it would be technically possible, and you deny one of them, of course I’ll point out that the other possibilities are still open. Or, if you deny it in a way that leaves an obvious hole that can be exploited. However, if you directly say Mashu did not unlock the door, I will of course look for alternatives, because the option of Mashu opening the door is no longer open. You are the one who can control how much time I spend with any particular theory. Give evasive and vague reds, and I will spend more time delving into that possibility. Give direct reds denying the idea behind the blue instead of a specific method, and I will move on.
Since you gave no reds to answer the other times Mashu could’ve technically unlocked the door and refused to give me the red I specifically stated would make me drop the issue, I can only conclude that either that actually is the answer or you’re just trolling me by stringing me along on purpose. So, I will say it once again. While it appears improbable, Mashu could’ve unlocked the door before they split into groups to search the first floor. You still have the power to make me drop this entire issue by denying in red that Mashu ever unlocked the door during the timespan from the closing of the room until Mashu went to the attic. Trust me, it will work, unless you phrase it in some weird way.
Ritsuka’s corpse being still in one piece is something to keep in mind for later. Earlier I requested you to deny any living being could leave the bedroom when it was locked because I wanted to keep the option of disposing of the body through the window open. Now I might as well ask you to extend that to dead bodies as well, just to make sure. Repeat in red: Ritsuka’s intact corpse could not be moved from inside the bedroom to outside the bedroom as long as the door is locked. It is impossible to put Ritsuka’s corpse back together after breaking it down into pieces.
I realized I had overlooked a possibility but then a re-inspection of reds revealed it was impossible without some nitpicking. So nitpick I shall, because I just want to throw this out there. The very first red, " At the time the body of Ritsuka left the bedroom he was found in, Ronove was still in the study. Of course he carried the key to the attic with him at this time.", actually refers to some instance of Ritsuka leaving the bedroom before his “corpse” was discovered. This means it is possible he never actually left his bedroom during the investigation, and was hiding there all the time, even when Mashu entered the room with Battler for the last time. Perhaps he was hiding under the bed or something when Mashu and Battler entered the room to find that his body had mysteriously vanished. He then died after Battler had left, killed by Robin. Robin was then either killed in retaliation by Ritsuka, who did not die instantly (perhaps he killed Robin with a command seal, if those even exist in F/GO), or by an enraged Mashu. There’s a red denying a “corpse of Ritsuka” existing in any form in the bedroom at that time, but a living body is not a corpse.
In any case, I’m running out of time again. Since I’ll be busier during the weekdays (and the next weekend as well), I recommend someone else pick up my sword and finish the game to avoid leaving it hanging. I know the narrative is far longer than what’s usual for gameboards in this site, but I’m sure you people have enough patience to read through it. Don’t let this fizzle out due to my lack of time. Tackle it as a group instead of watching a single champion desperately flail around, and bring the game to a proper conclusion.
I’d also like to say that while it might be that participating in other gameboards here has conditioned me to look for answers in particular places and not others, or it might be that I’m just not seeing some blindingly obvious possibility because I have the dumb, I feel like you might have underestimated the difficulty of this gameboard. Whichever way the solution is ultimately revealed, I’m curious to see if it really is something I’d consider a simple mystery that serves as a gentle introduction to narrative devices in Umineko.
Then I’ll close that path for good: After they found Ritsuka and Ronove locked the door of his room, Mashu never opened it again at any time.
I mentioned it already a few times, but: You have a really weird imagination.^^ Of course Ritsuka’s corpse cannot be moved from inside the bedroom to outside the bedroom as long as the door is locked. He also was at no point sliced into different pieces.
I suppose my red truth about a corporeal body unable to leave a locked room should also apply to a corpse, but whatever.^^
No, I’m afraid that’s impossible. This red truth applies to a timespan after the discovery of Ritsuka. I won’t go into the details for obvious reasons, but given that Ritsuka’s body was most definitely seen by everyone in the room before it was locked and not much time passed afterwards until Beatrice snatched him away, it should be quite obvious that this is the only possible timeframe in which things must have happened. Given my red truth of Ronove and Mashu being in the study at this time, the timespan is so small that it should be absolutely obvious to you who can be the only one responsible for it.
Ritsuka was not hiding there either. Interesting idea about the command seals. I haven’t thought about including them in the mystery. They do exist in F/GO, but you can only use them to force a Servant to use his Noble Phantasm, to restore his HP or by using all three to revive the party. I am just saying I include the revive in my red denying Robin to have been resummoned, because that would really be pointless.
So that’s the reason why people don’t dare to join in? Ah well, I suspected as much… In some ways I am probably too much of a hobbie writer to make it short and neat, I just have to write a convincing narrative. Though I may point out that this tendency of mine also restricts the direction it can go. Because I wanted to write a narrative in which everyone acts in-character, explaining my red about Mashu not being able or willing to just murder Ritsuka. The solution should be a story that makes sense for everyone involved.
… and that includes not doing random acts of dismembering… XD
No, you haven’t underestimated the difficulty of the gameboard at all, be assured of it! You actually were pretty damn close to the truth right away and because of it being so easy, I did my best to just smother you with red truths in a death or glory attack. I am surprised myself that I managed to sidetrack you, because I always expected that it becomes ever more difficult for the witch the more truths are given away. But apparently my slight glimmer of hope that I could keep up the fight by going all-out has proven successfull. Heck, one of your blue truths that still stands unchallenged utterly nailed one of the minor details, but you backed off without me doing anything to dissuade you (because I couldn’t, actually, it left me no room to maneuvre at all). Just scroll back and find it, if you come back.
Aside from that, an advice to you and anyone else willing to join in: Just take a step backwards! Look at what happened, look when the fantasy scenes sprang up and look what their outcomes is. It should be fairly easy to create a a straight-forward narrative without any complex schemes into these scenes. I am fairly certin I walled almost all other possibilities shut with the red, but there still is one single path of events that actually happened.
Something that I’ll briefly note is that I’ve been focusing on entirely on creating a culprit theory with Mashu, Nitocris, Ritsuka and Robin as the people involved in the murders. While I’m entirely convinced that Mashu and Nitocris are in on it, I’ve neglected to consider like half of the cast as possible co-conspirators. I wouldn’t be that surprised if that’s why I’ve been running around in circles.
I had a moment of time, so I figured I’d take another look at this.
Previously, I ended up going through all kinds of detours because I was so convinced that only people directly shown in the magic scenes would be viable culprits. However, that was, honestly, a pretty stupid thing to assume. So, let’s fix that mistake here and now.
Everyone is in-character and there’s only one person with a simple opportunity to unlock the door to Ritsuka’s room and who might have the motive and character to murder him. Granted, this means that Maria has to be an accomplice of sorts, but considering how much Maria adores Beatrice, that is not a stretch by any means.
The culprit is, of course, George Elizabeth Bathory.
The true nature of the incident is a murder mystery play that was exploited by Elizabeth to murder Ritsuka because she resented Ritsuka for putting her in the back ranks (in a mail bikini, even) when she’s a proud noble who deserved better. She might have also been jealous of Mashu for being Ritsuka’s favourite even though she’s some commoner. During the night, Mashu went into Ritsuka’s room and asked him to participate in creating a murder mystery play. Ritsuka (and Robin) agreed to this, and set up the closed room from the inside and played dead. Mashu, needing enough actors for her play to succeed, also recruited Nitocris and Elizabeth to participate. Including Elizabeth, however, was a fatal mistake.
Elizabeth decided she’d use this opportunity to murder Ritsuka for real. After Ritsuka and Robin had done their preparations for the locked room, she sneaked, incorporeal, into their bedroom and killed Robin. She had no particular grudge against Robin, but leaving him alive would disturb her plans to kill Ritsuka later, so she had to get rid of him. The next morning, things proceeded as Mashu had planned for his fake murder mystery, with the exception of Robin being actually dead instead of just hiding. Mashu “examined” Ritsuka’s “corpse”, and declared him dead. Naturally, at this point, Ritsuka was just playing dead. Mashu took the key to the room, and everyone went downstairs, Ronove locking the door behind them. When they were downstairs, deciding how they should search the mansion, Elizabeth volunteered to watch the door with Maria, as planned by Mashu, and Mashu gave the key to Ritsuka’s bedroom to her.
Regardless of whether Ibaraki had also been recruited into the plan to lead the other cousins away from the door or whether Mashu had just counted on managing to convince the rest to search the ground floor, Elizabeth and Maria were alone when Ronove, Mashu, Nitocris and Battler were searching the first floor. This gave Elizabeth an opportunity to go upstairs, open the door to Ritsuka’s bedroom, leave with Ritsuka and lock the door behind them, creating the illusion of the vanishing corpse. Elizabeth lead Ritsuka downstairs into some room she knew the ground floor investigation group had already searched, and murdered him there. For a Servant such as her against an unsuspecting ordinary human, killing Ritsuka quickly and discreetly would not be difficult. After she had done the deed, she returned to Maria, who had been watching the door and agreed to keep quiet about Elizabeth leaving for a moment.
Nitocris and Mashu followed Mashu’s murder mystery script, pretending that the witch had taken the corpse upstairs and absconded with it through the door, unaware that Ritsuka had died by Elizabeth’s hand mere moments ago on the ground floor.
That should sufficiently explain the entire case, I hope. My apologies for taking so long.
Oh my god… I haven’t expected you back before the weekend… and here I was so focused on my other fanfic that I hadn’t taken the time to give another hint. I’m so sorry. Such a marvellous and well thought out blue… and saying during the time Ritsuka’s body left the bedroom, Elizabeth was under the supervision of Maria and never left the ground floor would be enough to cut it down. I could also add that at the time of the game’s end, Ritsuka’s body is nowhere inside the mansion.
But… there is so much right with your theory… so much that I just have to correct you (partly because I of course want you to spell out the true solution).
Here my hints: Your first thought that only Mashu, Nitocris, Ritsuka and Robin were involved, was absolutely correct! You also already had completely and utterly solved how the door to the bedroom was unlocked and I have absolutely no idea why you walked away from an unchallenged blue truth that left me absolutely no room for any retort whatsoever. Really, this entire duel I was just using details and semantics to keep you from just steamrolling me. So please stick to your initial premise and finish me!
And here I was, so happy about my Elizabeth theory. Oh well, such is life.
The only unchallenged blue regarding how the door was unlocked appears to be “Mashu gave Nitocris the key and Nitocris was the one who unlocked the door”. However, I don’t recall the narrative having a frame of time in which that would’ve been possible. Oh well, I might as well be vague and throw the ball in your court. Nitocris opened the door at any time between Ronove locking it and Mashu leaving the study to go to the attic. Perhaps right after the door was locked, perhaps after they returned to the first floor to search it.
Then there’s the issue of the death itself. Granted, I don’t know the characters that well, but Robin and Mashu don’t seem like the murdering type, and Elizabeth and Nitocris have been denied. So, I should return to the idea of accidental death. There’s only one foreshadowed method of accidental death in the narrative. I wrote a blue about this before, and you responded in red, but the response might have been just misdirection. Ritsuka left the room and went to the attic. He accidentally killed himself by falling through the treacherous window. He did not intend to open it, it was a total accident.
As for why Robin would’ve died in this scenario… Mashu blamed Robin for her dear Ritsuka’s death, and killed him in murderous rage in the bedroom after everyone had gone downstairs.
I was very, very specific in my red, claiming that there was no time to unlock the door, carry the corpse to the attic and return to get seen by Ronove and Mashu the way Nitocris was. As long as you don’t want your characters to move up the stairs and down again, you should be fine.
Here we go… XD
That motive isn’t quite right… Mashu had no reason to blame Robin for anything regarding Ritsuka’s death.
Still… where is the corpse?
I was under the impression that Battler, Mashu and Ronove rushed into the corridor almost immediately when Nitocris started shouting about how the witch is taking Ritsuka’s corpse away. As such, I didn’t think there’d be time for Ritsuka to move to the attic without being seen by Ronove or Battler. Maybe the stairs to the attic were actually right next to Ritsuka’s bedroom, so I guess I shouldn’t have ruled that out.
Regarding Robin’s death… Hm. Robin blamed himself for what happened, and committed suicide in regret.
As for the corpse… Mashu took Ritsuka’s corpse away from the mansion grounds, and buried her beloved master. There was nothing else she could do for him anymore.
You are having the assumption that Nitocris shouted before she took ‘the corpse away’, which would be really stupid. She actually just shouted when Mashu and Ronove were arriving earlier than expected, because Ritsuka was only halfway up the stairs and needed to hurry up before being spotted.
I was wondering whether I should keep up a fight or let your motive stand. It appears I shouldn’t have tried to fight over the scraps…^^
Robin was murdered.
Nah, Ritsuka’s corpse was not moved after his death.