Question - Anyone wanna help invent some clues? I’ve come up with one so far… it’s for a Steampunk Fantasy Victorian Detective Mystery. I’ve got my beginning and ending but need everything in the middle.
#Need help coming up with clues for a mystery plot, genre and summary rambles enclosed.
white flare
K so the case is of a ‘Wayward Burial’ aka a dragon death where the body is unclaimed. (Both cases in the volume are going to be mysterious death investigations)
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(Start)
The Detective (police) was on a date at the scene during the event and was the first to interview every character he’d seen earlier in the scene. (His two friends the flatmates aka the thief and the clairvoyant, his girlfriend’s coworker and boss, two resident dragons, a man who seems to recognize the detective and who is in a state of shock but otherwise uninvolved, and the ferryman and dragon duo who had a vantage point of the event from the clock tower over the port.) Initial investigations do not reveal the identity of the missing slayer and the morticians arrive to mummify and care for the dragon. (Detective makes gripes about his partner and the morticians arriving before the chief officer did.)
After examining the scene and filing incident reports both the Detective and his partner get off work, the Detective noticeably bothered but not realizing until he gets home that its bothering him because this case is too similar to his origin story and how the slayer in that event was also never found or registered. The Detective decides to take a second look and the crime scene only to discover someone is there and to pursue, but looses track of the individual near a pit mine. Searching the area for an escape point he instead runs into the thief’s ‘prank’ from earlier and the two thugs throw him into the pit only for the Detective to fly back out of it surprising and arresting them for assaulting an officer. After delivering them to lock up the Detective visits his modder (and the former detective who found him in the burial) for repairs and a chat about the case. Both fail to notice the detective’s surface strength hover orbs broken when he fell into the pressurized area of the pit mine and are no longer functional.
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(Can possibly switch to have the modder advise he talk to the ferryman on duty and that take place next morning. Also at some point Detective’s girlfriend encourages him to seek out the man who might have information about the Detective’s traumatic past, although the Detective is reluctant to try remembering it any further.)
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(Two Clues)
(New Clue) The Ferryman comes back to the Detective reporting he overheard someone talking to the second victim before the incident, ||the human suspect trying to convince the dragon to go through with the deed. (Dragons are true immortals they need ‘assistance’ so the crime is not only murder but manipulating the vulnerable and leaving them in a worse state as conscious mummies)||(New Additions, voice sounds like multiple characters description.)
(OG Clue) The Dettctive finds a scrap of something with symbols and writing he can’t identify so takes it to the flatmates. The pair identify it as belonging to a mortician. While the Thief gives directions for entering the mines and catacombs safely the Clairvoyant has a dire vision from the evidence and warns that this evil is nothing like the detective has faced and that what awaited him was something agonizing and traumatic. The Detective thanks them and goes to the finale location.
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(End)
In the Grave the Detective interview the morticians in his usual casual and friendly way yet for the pair who were at the crime scene he asks specific questions, (separated and scenes played in tandem), eventually narrowing in on one who he asks hypothetical questions of what motive anyone would have to kill a dragon if they didn’t want the powers of a slayer. One gives a rousing speak about the injustices humanity has caused dragons in the past the the horror the ancient dragons go through even with the morticians looking after them; the other starts to break down about teens being foolhardy and not knowing what they were in for since no one told why the dragons do what they do or that being a slayer like the stories say actually means inflicting oneself with a madness that makes demands of the soul until they submit to becoming and replacing the dragon.
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As both scenes play out the Serial Killer and the Reluctant Slayer are both revealed, the detective helping talk down the Slayer and guiding him through his first change before getting the confessed identity of the manipulator responsible for planing and ordering the killings. In the scene with the killer meanwhile when the Detective reveals he knows the Killer points out that he’s figured out the Detective’s secret as well and why it was no slayer was found and only an amnesiac man who’s only record showed he was a foreigner who taken an apartment in the country and talked to no one before the burial occurred.
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The Detective doesn’t want to hear the truth but the Killer does so anyway, stating how he’s suspected for some time that the Frenchman was actually a dragon and the reason why he was a human at all was because he killed his own slayer and that’s why he became this way. The Detective denies it but the stress of the interaction and returning memories makes him change even more, the Mortician letting it happen then challenging that if the detective truly wanted make amends for the life he’s taken he should ||kill him|| and officially become one himself. (Currently ending is a dragon duel and the Detective indeed becoming a registered slayer and receiving the massive power up after freeing the dragons’ souls [possibly including the ancient dragons or at least walking them up in a new form]).
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Here’s link to where the chat was if you want to look over that. #writers-chatroom-2 message