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Odin Murder Arc Epilogue And Feedback


Guest Marlon Phoenix

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

Hello everyone!


Right before the start of June, I started the Odin Murder Arc. It followed a series of murders that took place on the Odin, with the victims being named characters from the Aurora. The arc began here:

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?p=100563#p100563


The focus of the event was not specifically in-game events, but the affects of canonical character deaths in such a high profile way. There were still a few events that allowed people to have a direct and indirect impact on how the arc progressed and even concluded. There was an event where an FIB agent and Odin Detective Wildes boarded the station to question people, and Wildes had to discreetly work with elements of ISD to process forensic evidence that the FIB had been stalling on working on.


There was another event where ISD had to find an Odin Maintenance ID, a key piece of evidence.


The final station event was rounding up people for questioning, which is where Drea Mirmtar was arrested, interrogated, and put up as the serial killer.


The arrest of Drea Mirmtar on the same shift ISD was asked to arrest the killer based on questions and evidence prevented several other murders from taking place. The arc effectively ended early, but still by design.


There was some upset over what happened with Drea Mirmtar in interrogation, namely that Kalren Halstere whooped her butt in interrogation. Brutishcrab wasn't encouraged by staff to "do something". From what I understand their character knew two of the victims personally. The actions that happened were taken at face value and played with. It was very dramatic! The biggest reason there was such a seemingly harsh response from the news articles putting Aurora on blast was twofold: Command and security was SUPER indifferent to what happened and Halstere remained on the job, and for dramatic affect to build up to the later assassination of Mirmtar by Halstere. I feel I have to have the disclosure of saying I was IC'ly involved in this last round as an Odin CSI agent being sent to collect fingerprints from people on the Aurora. The intention of my CSI's presence was to drop nudges towards certain plot threads for crew to follow if things started to stall. 'Oh the killer might be X, oh there was Y, oh remember to Z', things like that.


Mini-games were also given to members of the Discord Security server, in the form of cryptic messages sent by Detective Wildes pointing people in different directions of investigation.


Sleepywolf, who played Drea Mirmtar, also had some key interactions with people on the main relay server, where they wrote out some scenarios within Mirmtar's restaurant to tip people off on certain things.


How did you enjoy the arcs, and events? I personally had an absolute blast, and am deeply thankful to everyone who participated. There was very little room to plan ahead of time since a lot of what transpired was caused by emergent gameplay. There was a rough timeline, but it was more of an amorphous blob than a defined schedule. The only hard dates were the dates of the murders, of which we didn't get to all of the slots since security captured Drea so quickly.


Hall Of Fame:


❤sleepy❤ For playing Drea Mirmtar and being an (alleged) canonical serial killer.

Ornias For playing the 1st victim, Harley O'RyanDictator Abo For playing the 2nd victim, Charles Hall

Brutishcrab51 for playing the 3rd victim, Mikail Svensen

Kindest Garn For playing the 4th victim, Charlie Dove

ItsAnOmen2 for playing the 5th victim, Avery Bennett

kywes for playing Ali Holmes, the 4ft tall (alleged) serial killer who no one mentioned had to stand on his tip toes to reach the necks of the victims (if he did it)


Security Officer, Jack Kingston - Primary investigation; started the task force and compiled all the evidence with meetings with wildes and finding the ID, catching the killer

Detective, Trout - Assisted Jack Kingston and did the leg work with investigation, meeting with wildes, compiling evidence and making the arrest

Security Officer, Avery Bennet - Helped sort through theories and was murdered by the Odin Killer.

Head of Security, Marc Price - Helped with theories, met with wildes.

Head of Security, Juan Siganto - Psychological Profiles, Provided Theories

Detective, Saamp Oie - Provided basic information about Drea Mimitar

Detective, Annabelle Rose- Got receipts from Drea Mimtar, provided theories

Warden, Collin Kell - Provided theories

CSI, Murphy Goodwin - Provided theories

Security Officer, Sean Richter - Provided theories

Security Officer, Joel Bleasdale - Provided theories

Sean Brianne - gathered clues and provided theories

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

How many more were slated to be on the chopping block before Drea got caught early?

 

Ask IC'ly.


Not all questions will be answered....

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I think the arc was excellent, while the initial mistake of apartments being closed down and where the murder actually happened was a BIG mistake, it wasn't something that you couldn't repair later.


People got into it I like that, both as characters and as players, conducting IC and OOC investigations, debates and charades around it, hell even the first few rounds went great.


But man oh man of course it falls apart at the end, just as the noose was getting tighter someone has to play a big action hero, basically throwing a month of investigation into the air to jump the gun and "get the big mean killer" by causing a mistrial.

Now this wouldn't be so bad for me if he wasn't honored with the end by getting a big hero moment of shooting the bad guy instead of being ridiculed like he should have.


Otherwise it was good.

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How were the original victims chosen, OOCly? Strictly an opportunistic "call me if you want your unused character to be axed" or were you intending later down the line for some of the deaths to be more consequential and closer to people's hearts?


Was there anything you'd take away from the events as something that wasn't ideally executed on your part that you thought you could've personally done better to clarify, in hindsight?


What was with the shuttle crash near the Odin that predated the kick-starting of the events, by the way? Was that at all supposed to be related with the serial killings or was it a red herring?

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

The victims were chosen by reaching out to volunteers, who were put into slots and chosen to be killed on certain dates. The characters were not meant to be unused, unseen characters. Some volunteers had their characters removed from a slot because one of the requirements was regular play from that character prior to their scheduled death, with one round immediately before it (and a few hours to a day before the official news about their disappearance). It was not the intention of the event to kill unknown characters. I personally judged that each character that died (and the ones that made it) had enough of a following, or at least connections with some crew or players, that each of them would impact at least a few people.


Every death was consequential to somebody.


I personally do not regret the events of Kalren Halstere. It originally stumped me, but I looked to famous serial killers in real life to research how to handle it. In the first trial of Ted Bundy, the prosecution had a lot of its evidence thrown out. Was it not for Ted Bundy's intense sense of pride (and his escape attempt from prison) its' feasible that he would have walked out a free man. He was even offered a plea deal, but rejected it because he did not want to admit to any wrong doing.


That response I found would have been more disappointing than what actually happened. Dragging on the trial and slowly building up to Drea going free, seems to me like it would have been mean spirited for her to bounce and go off to live in hiding somewhere. It also would have been mean spirited against BrutishCrab to just pile on ridicule for the rest of the duration. The character's actions made sense in the context of what happened In-character. "im stressed" is often an excuse given to justify brutality from sec, but in this instance two things happened: 1) It was canonical and 2) the character is effectively permanently deleted from play.


In essence, I took inspiration from two sources: The Ted Bundy trial, and the Oswald assassination.

 

5hMEBkV.jpg

 

PERSONALLY the ending felt natural once I clicked in how it could work to be consistent with all that was going on, with the frame work of real life analogues. I understand that this ending is still contentious since for others it does not feel natural, especially when you do not see as much as the dungeon master. In the future I can definately look to see that any more arcs have endings that try to feel as naturally evolved from the source as possible. But, the incident with Halstere was also not forseen, so I had to work with it how I could have in a way that was not mean spirited.

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Alright so I've made my opinion known on the discord a couple of times, but for prosperity sake I'll repeat it here, where it's more centralized and won't get rapidly buried into obscurity.


For the vast majority of this arc, I genuinely had fun, as a passive observer at first, and then as a secondary character on Kingston's Investigation Team. And I will say, this arc really was made a lot by how much people got into it. People planning IC patrols in the hallways, buddying up when going off due to a known serial killer, it was all in good fun, and wasn't something that utterly broke the dynamic of the station in such a way that people who didn't actively read the Bugle were left lost or in the dark. It was all good fun.


The entire arc about Holmes, I can't complain too much about. It was a good bit of world building on the state of the Biesel government, and was a fun little side-tour from the main storyline of actually catching the killer. It does bother me though that the protests organize by Gonzales, which got over 50 players to agree and partake in, were so quickly swept under the rug and left utterly no impact on the outcome of the outcome of that arc, whether subtle or direct- no matter what, Holmes was most likely going to be released when the killings started up again, so there's very little pointing that our protest actually had any effect in that regard. Perhaps 50 people protesting a serial killer getting arrested isn't that big a deal from an IC perspective, but the ability to get 50+ active players to agree, with very few repeating Ckeys on the list, IS a big deal. It was a bit of a missed opportunity to at least make the playerbase feel like they played an active role in some part of the outcome of that arc, even if in reality things would have ended up more or less the same way.


Now, the ending. Oh boy, the ending. I realize that Brutish attempting to play Dirty Harry wasn't something that was planned out by the lore team, and according to Garn they weren't even told that it was going to happen- all Brutish asked was if they could do something that went against their loyalty implant, and they were told that they could, without clarifying *what* they were planning to do. I do not think the following court arc was at all necessary too, even with Halstere's actions in mind. The entire court arc of Drea's confession and the murder weapon being thrown out and it being declared a mistrial just felt wrong to me, because it made almost everything that Ferguson did (start an investigation team, run the prints, find the ID, get the confession, get the murder weapon, etc. etc. etc.) feel completely and utterly pointless, and just a waste of time for everyone involved, whether or not they were an actively involved or just passive.


We were suddenly back to step one of this entire investigation without any hope of actually succeeding anymore, and it took Halstere (the person who fucked it all up in the first place) sniping Drea from the grassy knoll and getting to play vigilante to end the arc on an even remotely bittersweet one. Perhaps this is realistic. Perhaps we were supposed to feel as betrayed and annoyed as our own characters that it was all for naught. That was the last thing we felt about the arc however, because it suddenly was taken out of our hands and we were no longer capable of trying to nudge it back onto trajectory, and it just left a bitter taste. There are times when it's good to let the players feel annoyed and hopeless, but doing it at the very end of the player-involved section isn't going to make people look back with enjoyment at all.


The arc would have been better if it had just ended with Drea being arrested, and it being vague on whether or not the charges could even stand up in court, without actually going into more details then that. The other issue the arc ran into, and directly related to my point above, is that once it entered the courtroom phase it just felt like it was dragging on for some people. The arc was very fun, but it was starting to wear out its welcome and become just a slog (the comparison I use is the Namek arc in DBZ where it just felt like it was going on and on and on, with the viewer seeing the exact same sights again and again), with the climax of Drea being caught bringing it into a slightly bittersweet, but still climatic finish. The epilogue being done through the Bugle makes perfect sense, there's only so much that can be done on the Aurora after all. But the fact the entire final part of the arc (the courtroom and Drea's assassination) was done in a location that nobody could even attempt to interact with just made it feel like it was going even more slow.


The amount of participation going on during the other two were good- the first part, when it was just starting, had a lot of passive involvement, with the examples I gave above of people walking together both in game and on the relay being just one. The second part, the main investigation and Holmes arrest, had a lot of stuff that happened on the station proper, that even if you weren't an active participant in were still happening around you- the protest (which, even if I stated above it felt like it did nothing, still was a fun little bit of player involvement, even if the fact the narrative barely changed to acknowledge it), the search for the maintenance ID, the arrest of Drea, etc. The third part though had nothing similar, and in our defense there was nothing we could do to participate. It was entirely off site, and a lot of people who otherwise could have participated were specifically banned from doing so.


With everything I said about the last third/ending of the arc, I want to repeat that the first two parts were very, very well done. There was just the right amount of player involvement where nobody could really mess up how the entire thing went down, while still making players feel like their actions had some, small effect on the entire outcome, even if it was just how many bodies there were by the end. This entire arc was a net positive in general, and the mystery of who the killer was, the search to find them, and the fear that you might end up being the next victim was honestly very enjoyable to partake in. I enjoyed this entire thing, and I wouldn't be opposed to something similar to this happening again in the future.

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I'm within the opinion that while the Halstere incident(s) probably shouldn't have happened under the usual constraints of understanding how far you're supposed to go with loyalty implantation and also setting yourself off the hook with how the implant influences your character, it still made good drama and it brought consequences that were well deserved. The lore team can't really be blamed for the state of affairs that progressed, what JB did with it was arguably the most fathomable and, dare I say such a contentious thing; close-to-realistic ending that we could've gotten.


A problem with the whole thing is the poor precedent it set with how characters can betray their implants. Though seeing as how this went, I doubt people who are whitelisted will seek reasons to break the conditioning of their implant without extremely good reasoning, as the situation with Halstere was more of a selfish justice kind of situation, and not really a "Well AKSHULLY this is probably okay". A HOS can get away with murder/torture in more motivated circumstances. I personally don't think it was close enough to warrant what happened but it's just my opinion. I don't think it breaks the rules per se, it's just strange to me.


A major lesson that can be learned is generally for other characters to not do by the same principle of Halstere if they expect to stay in the canon, alive and well. Halstere got too close to the case at hand and like Icarus with the sun, got burned for it, and took a gigantic fall when he really couldn't let it go in the end. Canon events and the decisions made during those events carry very heavy consequences. Halstere got the ultimate punishment (one that is already creating outrage ICly) for what he did, which certainly should serve as a bit of pragmatic discouragement for anyone who wants to try a similar stunt. JB definitely rolled with that the best he could've done.


Bit of a double-edged sword, but it was weighted well and the blows were struck where they were needed. Good event overall, it'd be pointless to go "-1 this event sucked" on the sole basis of it not going ideally, because it was still actually rather fun to observe and see.

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More events like this, please. They're really good, and bring the world outside the station to life. The way it was woven into the development of a separate investigation, and spread into the Relay, and NT-ISD discord was great. I was barely apart of it, but overall just an amazing idea for an event. 10/10 -IGN.

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For something that was originally so minor and blown up so dramatically, it was well done. There are some holes, including:

1: The cheese wire Drea had was never found.

2: Drea would never be able to kill Charles. I'm sorry, no. Going up against a 6' behemoth who specialises in combat as a 5' furball that can snap like a twig is ridiculous. Shit, they would barely have the height.

3: Forensic evidence for a Tajaran would be, logically, easier to get. Hairs, most especially. As well as claw markings on targets where they'd be grabbing them.

Besides these, I think it was all very nice. It was not intended for a large audience, but it was fun to watch, and it added to many rounds where all there would be talk about is lunch or some stupid shit like bowling.

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

For something that was originally so minor and blown up so dramatically, it was well done. There are some holes, including:

1: The cheese wire Drea had was never found.

you're right ;)

 

2: Drea would never be able to kill Charles. I'm sorry, no. Going up against a 6' behemoth who specialises in combat as a 5' furball that can snap like a twig is ridiculous. Shit, they would barely have the height.

With the element of surprise, and an adequate murder weapon, anybody can be assassinated. He was snuck up on from behind. Even then, the article describing his murder mentions the bathroom being utterly wrecked. He went down fighting. Even navy seals can be murdered by randos with luck and circumstance.

 

3: Forensic evidence for a Tajaran would be, logically, easier to get. Hairs, most especially. As well as claw markings on targets where they'd be grabbing them.

you're right ;)

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For something that was originally so minor and blown up so dramatically, it was well done. There are some holes, including:

1: The cheese wire Drea had was never found.

you're right ;)

 

2: Drea would never be able to kill Charles. I'm sorry, no. Going up against a 6' behemoth who specialises in combat as a 5' furball that can snap like a twig is ridiculous. Shit, they would barely have the height.

With the element of surprise, and an adequate murder weapon, anybody can be assassinated. He was snuck up on from behind. Even then, the article describing his murder mentions the bathroom being utterly wrecked. He went down fighting. Even navy seals can be murdered by randos with luck and circumstance.

 

3: Forensic evidence for a Tajaran would be, logically, easier to get. Hairs, most especially. As well as claw markings on targets where they'd be grabbing them.

you're right ;)

 

See, my issue with this event was, Drea was always pinned as the killer. If they were the killer, more sense should have been applied to their physical stature, as the original cams shot (First killed target holds open the door for [?????] would have outlined them as Tajaran immediately) as well as much more. If this was detailed, why didn't the Odin investigative team act on it? Missing that someone is a Tajaran for quite some time when there would have been physical evidence to support this the whole way through, and just saying "you're right ;)" does not a good investigation make.


Drea was to be the killer from the start, and it was mishandled. Clues are supposed to reveal a killer's identity, and missing their goddamn species so easily until a final witness proclaiming so (and even then, the Bugle didn't even say they were Tajaran! It had to be revealed in a fax!) is... dumb.


And if Drea wasn't supposed to be the killer from the start, then it's just suddenly pinning it on someone who fits the bill, and I'm not sure if that's worse or better.


(note:i actually liked this event it was just this that really cheeses my bacon pls dont get mad daddy jackboot)


EDIT: Right, I feel like I should clarify: Letting the playerbase know their species would have narrowed it down heavily and really put pressure on to make sure it wasn't an easy "IT WAS MIRMTAR". I realise that. I'm only saying from a realistic perspective, it'd probably make more sense to realise someone's species very quick.

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This story did a good job of helping people rediscover the significance of permanent character death in roleplay, in a game where cloning vats and non-canon rounds tend to completely devalue it. Unlike many lore arcs, this one was also directly relevant to most of the crew on the station, making it a good choice for the server in general. People Who Weren't Security finally got to contribute to the progress and outcome of the story, and people created a lot of good, organic interactions with the information they had. It was pretty engaging for those who chose to engage with it.


Unfortunately, the events of the epilogue had the side effect of taking much of the satisfaction of the solved case away from players, which is not ideal in a group RP. I feel like a twist like the mistrial and assassination would have been better served in a standalone story or single-player experience. It's often nothing but frustrating when the group is made to feel like one person undid all their work, which I think is where much of the dissatisfaction with the ending comes from.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm within the opinion that while the Halstere incident(s) probably shouldn't have happened under the usual constraints of understanding how far you're supposed to go with loyalty implantation and also setting yourself off the hook with how the implant influences your character, it still made good drama and it brought consequences that were well deserved. The lore team can't really be blamed for the state of affairs that progressed, what JB did with it was arguably the most fathomable and, dare I say such a contentious thing; close-to-realistic ending that we could've gotten.

 

I want to point out specifically here - the last time a Head Whitelistee decided to torture someone in interrogation, they got a ban and whitelist strip. This being one of our Old Guard, I believe MrIAmTool as Lysanuah Dilgan or somethingorother.


May be worthy to note how far rule breaking is allowed to go in events in the future if you haven't been cleared for it by the event manager and other staff.

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Here's the thing.


The consequence already happened. It was IC. Kalren is slated to be a ro-butt soon.


No need to double down when the dealer shows a 6 and you already have 18.

 

Brutish accepted this willingly because he's essentially bored of Aurora and the character. I'm not even saying he should be punished - I'm just saying consistency is important.

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