92nd ♫ | the quietness, profoundly consuming silence

[mytarget]

The Murder Game Meme



You know the script. You wake up in a place you've never seen before, with a whole bunch of complete strangers and there's a mysterious voice or a mascot or what have you ready to let you know how things are going to work around here.

The rules are simple: You're trapped here, with no hope of release or rescue. You've been provided with all the basic necessities you need to live comfortably, and all you have to do is settle down and live out the rest of your days here in peace. But if you can't do that -- if you're really so desperate to escape that you'll do anything -- then there's one teeny tiny thing you have to do first.

All you have to do is kill somebody.

But it's not quite that simple. Every death will be followed by a period of investigation, followed by a trial in which the survivors will attempt to solve the mystery and out the culprit. If the survivors guess correctly and out the culprit, the killer is executed and life goes on. But if the survivors guess wrong, then the culprit is free as a bird and everyone else is executed.

Even with the promise of freedom, can you really bring yourself to kill so many other people?

tl;dr: it's a murdergame meme. TIME TO HAVE A BIG OL' MURDERGAME BLAST.


Settings

1. High School A classic! Doesn't matter if you're too old or too young to be in high school -- you've been enrolled and the only way for you to graduate is to kill a fellow student. But hey, the faculties are nice!
2. Tropical Island Weren't you just hankering for a nice tropical vacation? No? Too bad! You're going to have a nice sunny vacation at the beach and if you don't like it, just kill someone and go home. Simple!
3. Prison It doesn't matter if you don't remember committing any crime; you've been tried and found guilty of something or other and now you can go ahead and rot away in jail. If you ever want to see the sunlight again, better put that criminal mind to good use and get rid of your inmates.
4. Mall A huge mall stuffed full of stores, places to eat and all the regular amenities like deadbolted doors and the threat of death. It's like Black Friday but even worse because you can't leave and all the rest of the shoppers might actually kill you for real this time.
5. City Holy shit, you've got the run of a whole city this time around! Maybe with all this room to keep out of each other's way, you'll be able to make sure no one starts killing people. But probably not.
6. Cruise Boat YOU'RE ON A BOAT, MOTHERFUCKER. The accommodation is all five star, even if there's no one around to act as wait staff. The only snag is that you still have this whole murder thing hanging over your head – but on the plus side, they have those little drinks with the umbrellas in, so...
7. Space Station THE FINAL FRONTIER... Maybe you're familiar with space stations like this or maybe all this future tech is fascinating to you. Not like it matters either way, of course, because you won't be getting out of here unless you lay down a murder on someone.
8. Wildcard! None of the above scratch your murder itch? Go wild and come up with your own setting!



Downtime

1. Excuse Me, Who Are You? You've just woken up in this weird place and you have no idea what's going on. But hey -- maybe this stranger's more informed than you. Or maybe you can put your heads together and investigate what's going on.
2. Social Link Go! Well, if you're going to be stuck in here for however long, you might as well get to know the people stuck in here with you. You've got plenty of rooms to explore together and there's enough to do to keep you occupied. How do you plan on passing time without killing each other?
3. Vending Machine Woes Somewhere in this place there's a mysterious vending machine that spits out all manner of bizarre items and occasionally dispenses items that belong to you and the other people trapped here. You've got a fat stack of tokens and nothing to lose.
4. The Corners of My Mind So as it turns out, your lovely hosts have been fiddling with your memories. Maybe you're just discovering this now or maybe you've had a particularly upsetting memory regain you're dealing with.
4. Wildcard! GO WILD AND BE FREE (or as free as you can be here, anyways)



PUTTING THE MURDER IN MURDER GAME

1. Motive Your mysterious overseer has decided there's not nearly enough murder going on and so they've ~helpfully~ given you a little push to do the deed. Maybe one of your loved ones is in danger, maybe they're offering more money than you could ever dream of or they're threatening to reveal your deepest darkest secrets. Whatever is it, would you kill for it?
2. Murder WELL APPARENTLY, YES. Are you a killer or are you being killed? Either way, someone's not walking away from this alive.
3. Body Discovery Rise and shine, murdergame! It's a brand new day and someone's dead. Better get investigating!
4. Trial You know how this one goes. Line up all your evidence and sniff out the killer -- or sit there and sweat and hope no one works out you're the murderer. Will they go down with a confession or put up a fight?
5. Afterparty You've survived another trial, but more of your friends have died. Even without the executions, trials are a stressful enough affair. It's time to destress and lick your wounds and support each other.
6. Mastermind It's the end. It's time to uncover all the mysteries behind this murder game -- and find out just who trapped you here. Are they really an unconnected party, or is the mastermind someone among you...?
7. Freedom Just as it says -- you're finally free, but at what cost? Have those you love been returned to you, or are you still reduced to just those who made it to the end? Are you on your own, or is anyone here to help you? And more importantly, how the hell are you going to get home?
8. Wildcard YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO


OPTIONAL FUN

Lots of murdergames have in-universe public profiles for other characters to get the skinny on yours. If you'd like to fill one out to post with your toplevel, peep at the code below!

<center><b>Name:</b> NAME | <b>TITLE (Super High School Level, Ultimate, Champion, etc)</b> <b>Age:</b> AGE | <b>Species:</b> SPECIES | <b>Occupation:</b> OCCUPATION <b>Likes:</b> LIKES <b>Dislikes:</b> DISLIKES <b>Traits:</b> A HANDFUL OF NOTABLE TRAITS <b>Trivia:</b> A PIECE OF TRIVIA</ul>

Comments

Lambda | OC

[amorevolous]

Name: LΛmbda | Champion Love Freak | Cute Cupid
Age: Yes | Species: Virtuadoll | Occupation: Virtuadoll
Likes: Music, flowers, chocolate, romance, humans
Dislikes: Being left alone
Traits: Loyal, lighthearted, lovey-dovey.
Trivia: Lambda's favourite genre of music is electro pop.

[ I AM A NORMAL AI. COME CLOSER. Image ref here and I don't have an impressions post yet but she is functionally in her late teens/early 20s for whatever it matters cos she's a singing robot

Lambda is an AI that has?? presumably?? been yeeted into a physical body for murdergame purposes. She's peppy and cheerful and cute and sweet and all that good stuff. She likes gossip and romance and singing. She's curious and inquisitive and despite having the energy of someone with no brain, she's viscously clever. She's also completely fucking unhinged!!! She loves humans, but she also has a very limited understanding of human morality, social norms and values which means she can be shockingly callous and cruel to the humans around her with basically zero malice intended. She's kind of innocent only in the sense that since she doesn't really understand what she's doing, you can't exactly call her bad. She just wants to make people happy!! She just has a terrible way of going about it!!!! ]

[favoriteanalyst]

[jesus christ she's a lot to take in and heavily leaning on a theme there huh. Well! This is all fine! Because local Normal Human is here to make sure she gets properly socialized and maybe, uh, teach her how to human a little better. (Who...thought he was the best choice for this?)

Executions are needlessly...awful, and plenty of people are pretty bummed about the whole thing. To put it very mildly. Some of them are kids, some of them haven't been subjected to or seen violence of this nature, and some have never been in this kind of life or death situation. He's not sure how the loving AI is taking it, though. Because she seemed to really like the culprit, right up to the very end, in spite of being a murderer. She'd damn near convinced a majority to vote for someone else for how vehemently she'd vouched for them.

There are those who take less than kindly to that. Mobius is not one of them, thankfully.]

Hey Lambda. [He's as mild as ever, soft drink in one hand, piece of cake leftover from a much less somber party in the other. He's not mad, not even disappointed! The peace offerings are set down, because they're for her, not him. Not that they'll go to waste if she doesn't want them. But who doesn't like a little sugar?] How are you holding up?

[amorevolous]

[ Lambda's not usually a girl for eating much at afterparties – being in a meat person body is all sorts of new for her and she's learning lots of things. The first of which is that for as good as food tastes, the actual act of eating and digesting it is kind of gross! She's been getting better at not just accidentally starving herself, but the sideye she gives the cake he sets down is probably about 60% because of food aversions and only 40% the general sour vibes she's giving off right now. ]

Are you here to yell at me too?

[ She sounds hilariously sulky and yet, somehow, not sulky enough? She's curled in on herself, knees tucked up to her chest, giving off the energy of a kid who's gotten in trouble for breaking a window with a soccer ball and not, you know, having come within two or three votes of getting them all killed. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

Nah. Just to talk, if you're up for it. Some of the others, they're pretty mad at you, right? [Yeah, no shit, they're pissed as hell, and they have every right to be. But yelling at the virtuadoll about things she might genuinely not understand is not going to make her understand them better.] Do you know why?

[amorevolous]

[ She fidgets a little uncomfortably where she's say, curling in tighter on herself and making a point of not looking up – she doesn't want to meet his gaze. This feels like a trick question, but she's not certain what the trick might be. ]

We almost voted wrong. So we could have died.

[ Whether her lack of acknowledgement as to whose fault that is is on purpose or not is unclear. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

That's right. You changed a lot of minds by vouching for him so hard, too. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means people here are willing to listen to what you have to say.

[...On the other hand:] Maybe not so much after this.

[amorevolous]

That's not my fault.

[ She'd been poking cautiously at the slice of cake with the very tip of a fork but now she gives it a particularly pointed stab, with her voice sharpening to match. ]

He managed to trick everyone else, too. Not just me.

[favoriteanalyst]

I know. That's part of the whole deal, trick people into voting for someone else and get away. But the evidence was really stacking against him. I'm not saying you have to turn with the crowd, but it's okay to look at things with a critical eye.

[He lets her do her stabby thing, sitting back and watching for a long moment.]

It's hard when everything you know is swayed by emotions.

[amorevolous]

[ Leaving the fork impaled in the cake, Lambda finally gives him her fully attention. She's still more or less consumed by the energy of Sulk, but she seems a bit more willing to actually engage in a conversation now. ]

... Things are confusing here.

[ That might be the most open thing she's said... more or less ever. She's not good at focusing on herself and how she feels, especially when it's bad – the humans are supposed to be her focus here, especially when they're all so clearly suffering. But... ]

Virtuadolls are made to... support and uplift humans. We're supposed to make them happy. And everyone seemed so twisted up and upset thinking that he might have done it... so if I could convince them it wasn't true, wouldn't that have made everyone happier?

[favoriteanalyst]

[He leans in at the admission, arms on the table, listening intently. This is progress, and he wants to encourage it.]

For a short time, maybe. Very very briefly. But they still would've had to vote for someone, which would've upset them. And if we voted wrong, there's some pretty bad consequences to that.

What's going to be really hard for you is knowing that you can't make everyone happy all of the time. It's just not possible, and you're gonna burn yourself out real fast trying.

[amorevolous]

But...

[ She goes silent again, but this time she isn't lapsing into a sulk, it seems. Explaining things to the humans here is so difficult – they misunderstand, make leaps of logic she can't follow and now and then, she'll say something that makes them give her a look she doesn't particularly like. She has to pick her words carefully here if she wants to make herself understood. ]

With things as they are now... everyone is miserable anyway. And they're going to keep being miserable, with themselves and with each other. Who knows how long that's going to last? When you think about it like that... it'd be nicer if they could've just been happy and then not had to worry about anything else after that.

[ Even if they'd had to die for it. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

[Time works in strange and at times mysterious ways in the TVA. He has to wonder, then, if time works strangely for an AI, too. If there's truly a difference between seconds and minutes and days and years.]

I think most people would be happier living longer than having genuine happiness for a couple minutes. [He unfolds his arms and talks with his hands.] When someone's given more time, then they can fill their time with more joy, to find the joy in the little things and the big things both. No one's going to be happy all of the time; life doesn't work that way. But working toward a goal, or existing for family, for friends, for hobbies--hell, even a tv show or a book series, or yelling at videos on the internet or something. Those are the joys people get out of their lives that make life worth it. Most people wouldn't see the point of giving up their lives for a brief moment of the kind of joy they might be able to make for themselves in the future.

[amorevolous]

[ To Lambda's credit – if you're generous enough to give her any after the mess this day has been – it does really seem like she's trying to understand. She has her head bowed a little as if the weight of what she'd nearly done and what she'd actually ended up doing is finally starting to settle on her. Even if it's certainly more gentleness than she deserves, it's enough to make her absorb at least a little of what he has to say. ]

If they were all to stay alive longer... even if they're miserable now, there might be more opportunities to be happy in the future...

[ This sounds, for all the world, as though it might be a revelation to her. ]

But all this misery doesn't have anywhere to go, does it? Even if they're happy later, it won't change the fact that everyone's so sad now.

hi claire it's isa. i brought this oc out just for lambda

[kire]

[

Name: Grey | The Sword Age: 20 | Species: Human (Modified) | Occupation: Unit (Sword)Likes: Duty Dislikes: Deviation Traits: Strong and silent. Trivia: Grey graduated at the top of its class and is an esteemed military Unit.

out of all the participants in this "game" — unwilling though they may be — Grey thinks its own presence here is perhaps the strangest. murder doesn't bother it in any way, even if its intended purpose is for more direct combat. but it's a weapon. there's no point enrolling it in something that requires desire and active participation, because it exists to be wielded by someone else's hand. it's as nonsensical as putting an inanimate object in the same position. if the Gamerunner wanted someone who would play along, they should have brought Grey's commanding officer with it.

but he isn't here, and Grey has no way of knowing what his will would be. instead, it has Lambda. ]

What is today's purpose, Lady Lambda?

[ Lambda is... not the type of person who typically wields Grey. it supposes that doesn't mean as much now; anyone here could have made use of it, in the situation they're all in. maybe she will make use of Grey, sooner or later. the reason it put itself in her hands, though, is simply that she took charge. she approached it repeatedly over the days that passed. she invited it to come with her around the city that they're all trapped within, again and again, without concern for Grey's inexperience in leisure.

that was all. that made her an obvious choice to offer itself to. it made that vow to her, explained what that meant, that it would serve her as a weapon. normally, it had told her, almost embarrassed — normally this is the kind of thing that a Shield would do, to pledge protection like this, but a weapon of war has little purpose here, and so Grey will assume this role instead. not a knight or a bodyguard, not something with a will of its own. a sword for her to use to defend herself with, or to attack others.

the biggest relief is that the Gamerunner showed the participants one kindness: each of them got to choose something of themselves to keep, before the rest was stripped away. in terms of combat, Grey could do its job just as well without the specific blade it elected to keep, but this sword is the one that regulates its emotions. every Unit carries an item that resonates with an enchantment lodged within its own body, to make it easier for its feelings to be suppressed; childhood training can only do so much to modify the human mind. without this magic to ensure that it's kept in check, Grey would be considered defective. if anything happened to the enchantment, it doesn't know what it would do. ]

Are you going to the gardens again?

[ always you, not we. you bring an item with you when you go; the item itself doesn't accompany you. ]

thank you for this incredible fucking food

[amorevolous]

[ Lambda likes Grey.

Which is kind of a meaningless statement to make when it comes to Lambda, who seems to like everyone she comes across, at least here. She's had smiles and encouraging words and unfailing kindness for all of them... but of course, when you think about it like that, it means she isn't really friends with any one of them in particular. Grey is the sole exception.

It's started as simple curiosity – their profile says they're human, so it's part of Lambda's programming to uplift them as best she can. But they're so cool and detached that it's a unique sort of challenge to get any sort of response out of them. So she's been trying again and again and again and now the two of them just happen to be a pair, in more ways than one. Maybe Grey doesn't understand it quite yet – but love is a thing Lambda knows inside and out and she's certain that if there's anyone best suited to teaching Grey, then it's her.

She's got a beaming smile on his face this morning and as soon as Grey speaks up, she's cuddling up against their side, like usual. She's clingy with everyone in her own way, but Grey certainly gets the worst of it. ]

Mmm, I haven't decided yet! [ Her voice is sunny and singsong, like she hasn't a care in the world and they're not trapped in some horrible death game. ] I haven't seen the new parts of the city yet... so it could be fun to explore there!

forgive the awkward icons

[small_potatoes]

[There is one person who doesn't seem bothered by Lambda's accidental cruelty no matter what it is. And he's not exactly friendly with her- her 'make everyone happy no matter what' schtick was too close to Maruki for him to be too accepting. But there's the flipside of Akechi always being brutally honest with her.

Regardless of how bitter it might be.]

That was stupid.

[As one of their fellow captive storms away, hurt by something the AI had said]

[amorevolous]

[ Lambda's been doing her best, her very, very best, to keep everyone's spirits up while they're trapped here. It's not always easy, obviously, and there's only so much she can do when people are determined to be down in the dumps. But positive morale is going to be the thing that gets the most people out of here alive and it's what she's made to do as a virtuadoll. So it should be easy.

Should be. ]

Stupid?! [ It comes out in an offended little squawk. ] I was just trying to cheer her up...!

[ Of course, with a line like "Don't worry about the motive! Even if you don't do anything this week, somebody else is bound to kill and your secrets will be safe!" she's lucky that someone walking away in a huff is the worst she got. ]