Rokkenjima Festival of Mayhem - Event: Crime Scene Explanation

[Seraphitic]

Greetings witches and visitors alike to the festival of mayhem’s first day. Today we will enjoy each others’ mystery solving skills as well as their company.

Crime Scene Explanation

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This is a very simple competition. You will all be given a short story involving a crime scene. There is no right answer and you will not be given any red truths about the scenario. Your goal is not to seek the truth but to amuse yourselves and us with the most creative and ludicrous explanation of the events that you can. Make sure to discuss among your teammates and work together to explain our little story of mayhem.

Detective Sergeant Inspector-in-chief Derek McSnoop has been called in on a case. It is a grisly case to be sure but such is the nature of the brilliant sleuth’s job. He is known for cracking even the most obtuse and incomprehensible of cases.

He is introduced to the scene by his old friend Lieutenant Marple. “Good to see you again Derek. We’ve got a doozy of a case before us.”

Derek was led into the kitchen of a rather large restaurant. It was clean if a little outdated in places. The owner of the restaurant obviously took great pains to make sure the counters and tables were always spotless. He also noticed the numerous inspection awards framed and hung up on every wall. All of the staff had been ushered out to be interviewed elsewhere. On passing by the counters he noticed that there were ingredients strewn everywhere. Flour and eggs had fallen on the ground. Salad ingredients were lying everywhere. A stove had been left on and two pots of water had been upended.

Finally Detective McSnoop and Lieutenant Marple arrived at the manager’s office. In it lay a balding, late-middle age man. He seemed fairly well dressed though his shirt had several sweat stains and was severely wrinkled. He had several lacerations all over his body. However, Derek could tell at a glance that it would be a very odd knife indeed to make those kinds of marks. There was also significant bruising to the arms and neck.

“We found him like this,” said Lieutenant Marple. “The door doesn’t seem to have been locked but the restaurant was. He was found like this early in the morning when the pastry chef came in to start. Right next to the body we found several… odd items. There was a ashtray which had been knocked over, a rather large semi-thawed fish, a couple of bottles of guinness and a abnormal quantity of soup ladels.”

“And that’s not the only weird thing about this case. The staff all assure us that this man was not employed in any way by the restaurant. All the staff are accounted for. We haven’t gotten all their alibis confirmed yet. We just have no clue what’s going on.”

You do not need to incorporate all elements of the tale into your theory, but the more the better! We look forward to seeing some of Rokkenjima’s most masterful displays of absurdity. We are just looking for you to answer the basic questions of whodunnit, how, and why? If you want to add more you are more than welcome but try to make your submissions between 1-3 paragraphs long.

This event is scored competitively, so first place will get 4 points, second and third place will get 3 points, and fourth and fifth place get 2. If your submission is past the deadline, you still get 1 point, so long as we can still see you put effort into it.

The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, 11:30 am UTC. Good luck and have fun!

[Karifean]

Team Goldenslaughterers submission:

"ALL the restaurant staff members were the culprit. You see, the restaurant has two sides to it- one that caters to regular people and one that caters to odd people. Those with acquired taste log onto a dark web site where they can order all sorts of weird delicacies from monkey brains, to alligator claws, to jelly fish sashimi! One particular popular item is human pot stew! However, to make things humane, the restaurant kills only people who volunteer to die. You’d be suprised how many do volunteer- I mean if you are gonna commit suicide might as well do it to help others! The volunteer this time around was a man who lost everything in his life . He entered the restaurant at the scheduled time to where he was lead by the staff to the kitchen. Normally the staff would tranquilize their ingredient to alleviate the pain (after all the less the ingredient struggles, the tastier it is). However, the man asked the staff to not tranquilize him- he wanted to feel “alive” in some shape or form even if it mean feeling immense pain. The staff, being kind and just people, were moved by his plea. Thus they started their work on the man while he was not tranquilized. All the items you see strewn across the kitchen in the crime scene is the result of the man squirming around while he is in pain. The staff locked the restaurant to not let anyone in and to not hear anyone. The staff were about to cut the man into pieces after his death, but the manager told them to stop. It turns out the customers who wanted human pot stew would not be able to make the reservation. Thus they left the man’s body alone for the time being. The manager ordered the people to move the body, but the staff refused- after all it was long past their shift and they weren’t paid overtime! The manager, being a cheap stake let his staff go for the night. He was too feeble to move the body himself, so he figured “screw it let just pretend it was a murder and let the detectives clean up the body.”

[Karifean]

Team Goatdatricers submission:

One of the waiters at the restaurant wanted to become a chef and therefore joined a cult of Goatdatrice, the witch of the culinary arts, who had meetings all around the world. This time its meeting would be here at the restaurant. Therefore once the restaurant closed the waiter used his key to let everyone into the kitchen where they could sacrifice a goat. However the problem was that the farm nearby had been hit by a plague and there were no more goats to kill!

Therefore they had to improvise and get a random hobo off the street (bribed with beer) so that they could sacrifice him. However the hobo wasn’t exactly the most presentable person out there so like what they would have done to the goat they washed him and dressed him up. They took him to the manager’s office as the sacrifice’s had to be made in the offices of people with power. After getting him drunk they told him to eat a piece of Makrel and as he was smashed out of his mind he agreed to do so. However much to Goatdatricers dismay half way through the sacrifice they were attacked by the cult of ‘I’m at soup!’ who attacked the cultists and the hobo.

After knocking the Soup cultists out they threw them back out the street and as a punishment refused to return their weapons (the soup ladels) and the Goatdatricers left them sprawled onto the floor. After sacrificing the hobo by slicing him with a scythe symbolising the harvest of ingredients they took him to the oven. However it turns out that the head chef had arrived early! Annoyed at the fact that his oven would be used to cook a human, a fight broke out which left the kitchen in an outright mess as ingredients were used as weapons. The fight led to a stalemate and the chef and the waiter agreed to frame the owner in hopes that they would both be promoted. In a rush to clean things up before the next employee arrived they only were able to return the kitchen tools to the right place however one of the cultists who didn’t work in the restaurant accidently left a water pot upside down after filling it up (he wasn’t the brightest of the bunch).

[Karifean]

Thanks to all who submitted! Judging and scoring will be done within the next 24 hours.

Spectators may feel free to comment on these wonderful explanations in this topic =P

[Seraphitic]

Crime Scene Explanation - Verdicts

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#2 goes to Team Goldenslaughterers! (+3 points)

Kari: What an incredibly nice bunch of people~ and it ends in “let’s have this be a murder because we can’t be bothered to take care of it ourselves”. Just perfect.
Sera: Actually an incredibly well thought out answer to the simple little mystery. Bravo.
Vyse: You not only spun a ridiculous tale, you told it in a way that you really can’t fault the culprits too much.

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#1 goes to Team Goatdatricers (+4 points)

Kari: This story is goddamn hilarious. The Goatdatricers truly live a wondrous life, don’t they. So many little details and nice touches in this tale.
Sera: “I’m at soup!” I adore how much of the story you used and how crazy the solution is.
Vyse: The level of absurdity of this tale is through the roof!

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I hope that everyone enjoyed these solutions. The judges thank you for your submissions and look forward to seeing more from you.

[VyseGolbez]

Team SleepingVerborum and RKW Berris late submission:

Derek McSnoop hummed, smiling. After observing all rooms for the second time he noticed a menu sheet lying on the floor among crashed ingredients. Then Derek McSnoop scanned the paper, noticing that there are no dishes made of fish. Then, he glanced at a large aquarium, placed in the centre of the dining hall.

“Hey, Marple. Come here for a second.” The lieutenant rushed to his colleague, almost slipping on the smashed ingredients.

“You said the pastry chef was the first one to discover the body. I think it was him. Remember that semi-thawed fish? Seems like it was taken from the aquarium and thrown into the fridge some time ago. See, the aquarium is almost empty now. Judging from all this mess here and in the cabinet, the victim caused all these destructions. He forcefully KILLED that innocent fish, he froze it to death… because he was a real fish hater, he couldn’t stand the existence of a fish-friendly restaurant. But he needed some place in the fridge, so he threw away other ingredients right on the floor.

The pastry chef saw that and got into the argument with the victim. He led that man to the cabinet, then tried to calm him down with some beer. He also brought the poor fish with him because it was already half-frozen!! It didn’t work. The victim was furious. And… the chef decided to kill him. By smashing the fish at him. All those marks and bruises are caused by the solid object. Then he just made it look like he wasn’t the murderer, because how could a mere pastry chef kill someone with FISH!”