[LP CYOA] 傳

[Smashing Axe]

Smashing Axe, care to vote C then and see if Fu Xia did it? As you say, he's much more expendable than the chief even if he happens to be innocent.

B is not going to buy us time anyway: "Unrest in the city was rising at the current uncertain situation, and they had agreed to close this case of Du Yao’s murder so that they could move on to other issues… like how the city would be governed from now on."

Lobby, lobby, lobby. I always intended to vote C

 

[Absinthe]

Sorry about that.

By the way treave, do we get to see Xuezi's skills?

Yes, I do believe that we can be wrong about Fu Xia's guilt. Just because he's incompetent doesn't automatically make him guilty.

Except there's more than incompetence at hand. There's also the suspicious lack of alibi, the fact that we know he's been two-faced, the fact that he has a weapon matching the crime scene, and the fact that Xiaofang was arguing with the person who assaulted him, meaning Xiaofang knew the person.

If the dude is innocent and we cannot for the life of us produce solid evidence of his guilt, then what?

Then they find him guilty anyway because they need a scapegoat? Worst case scenario I suppose they could pin it on Jiang Zheng anyway. But if you don't vote C, they will definitely pin it on him.

And even if he is found guilty, it still makes the Empire look just as bad as Jiang Zheng's "guilt" and will provoke the Bandit Kingdom.

Are you seriously pretending it's just as good to have Jiang Zheng die instead of Fu Xia? No really.

 

[Baltika9]

And even if he is found guilty, it still makes the Empire look just as bad as Jiang Zheng's "guilt" and will provoke the Bandit Kingdom.

Are you seriously pretending it's just as good to have Jiang Zheng die instead of Fu Xia? No really.

Humor me: how is it worse?

 

[treave]

Xuezi's current skills are heavily capped by her seals, for now all she has is experience. I suppose I could give an indicator of what it's like.

 

[Absinthe]

For one, we know Jiang Zheng is innocent, while on the other hand Fu Xia is actually likely to be guilty. So in one choice we give up an innocent person. In the other we give up a quite possibly guilty person.

For another, Fu Xia has been incompetent and useless. Jiang Zheng is presumably actually competent.

 

[Baltika9]

Okay, but it's still an imperial constable that is found guilty. And that doesn't make a difference for the Empire one way or the other, their standing suffers either way.

 

[Absinthe]

Okay, but it's still an imperial constable that is found guilty. And that doesn't make a difference for the Empire one way or the other, their standing suffers either way.

Even there it's better to offer up Fu Xia. Because Jiang Zheng is the commander of the imperial constables while Fu Xia is not. A convicted commander looks worse than a convicted constable for the empire's standing. And if Fu Xia is actually the mole as we suspect, then exposing a mole shifts the guilt away from the empire.

 

[Absinthe]

They're going to torture Jiang Zheng day and night. You expect him to hold out for seven days? These guys are good at their torture, you know.

Besides, if they start trying to squeeze a confession out of him, then he's probably going to accept that he's already done for, with no escape in sight. In that case, holding out against torture will only prolong his suffering, so he'd probably just accept the execution and be done with it.

 

[Nevill]

Where does A say anything about pursuing any of the leads?

A. You keep quiet. Since the garrison commander and Du Yao’s lieutenant appear to be agreeing on this matter for some reason, it would be best not to upset the boat.

The evidence you have managed to gather is there, and if it cannot convince them of his innocence, that is all you can do.

The truth will out itself eventually, and perhaps the chief will be a necessary sacrifice to keep the peace.

It reads 'I wash my hands off the case' pretty unambiguosly.

 

[asxetos]

Voting A but i dont like it.

 

[Nevill]

What I know is that I definitely, under no circumstances want to go with A. Jing never struck me as a guy that is willing to bend his own personal principles for something the voters perceive as a greater good. This whole situation reeks of UNIFIED TIBET hysteria that could have very well placed zhang manxing on Tufan throne. In the end, we found a way to resolve it in a much better way, even though we could not have guaranteed that such a resolution will be available when we made the choice.

It is about B or C for me, but I really don't want to sacrifice a 'quite possibly guilty person' to save an innocent person. If your goal is also to make you feel better about the choice, this is not the way to advertise it.

Since we didn't procure any evidence on our own, extracting it from Fu Xia at this point does not attract me in the slightest. I think I'll go with B for this one. Whether it will save Zheng's life on not is up in the air, but I am positive it won't result in the same thing as A. Xiaofang was atttacked with the same poison after Zheng was apprehended, so if the angle of the prosecution is that he could have secretly known a needle technique, we are likely to put Zheng's involvement in doubt.

I believe this would rock the boat quite hard, but I do not really care about it.

Edit: In any case, as cynical as it may sound, our goal is not to save Zheng or to find out who killed Du Yao. Our goal is to find the manual.

Since the culprit left an obvious trace to Du Yao and made an effort to place blame on chief Zheng for the murder, I am guessing that vindicating the chief of guilt would throw a wrench in their plans. We should have learned by now that playing someone else's game by their rules never ends well (Bai Jiutian, anyone?), and A has the culprit achieving pretty much everything they wanted and beheading the pursuers to boot.

Now, I guess the current set of choices means that we messed up. But where and when did we possibly go wrong? We gathered what we could from the corpse, the crime scene and the daughter. We also got something out of search for Xiaofang, so it's not like we failed there.

We only gained a vague, potentially false confirmation of Jinkong Sect's involvement from the servants through Fu Xia.
We did not procure anything from Du Yao's underlings.
We did not let Fu Xia check on Jinkong Sect.
We did not enlist Yunzi's help.
We did not detain Fu Xia.

So far, most of these points that may have or may have not contributed to our failure have to do with either Fu Xia, Jinkong Sect, or both. There are ample reasons to check both of them, but it would be pretty shity if we get the wrong guy. And I have a really hard time trying to connect Fu Xia and the Xueguizi technique that killed Du Yao and injured Xiaofang.

 

[Kz3r0]

C

 

[Tribute]

B>C

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

A

 

[Elfberserker]

B>C. for now.

 

[Jester]

C

 

[Akkudakku]

C> B also havent I said it? The reightous groupies would find our eunuch.

 

[Kipeci]

B>C, sacrificing the chief is repugnant. Great update, by the way!

edit: I would like to note that we should really make sure that our choices match up with what we want in the future. Do we care more about friendly relations with the constables here, or ones with Youxia City? The best Youxia city reputation will be gotten if we give them the least work to do here so that they can move on to settling the chaos, which would be achieved through A or C. We kinda screw things up with the constabulary if we get their chief be convicted, and if we aren't able to actually put the screws in for Fu Xia... well, he'll obviously be pretty unhappy with us, and he'll take up a more important role if the chief is convicted anyway.

Personally I want more to develop a stronger working relationship with the constables than the city, so I prefer option B. They're unhappy about it but we might just gain enough time to figure out who's behind all of this.

 

[Esquilax]

Okay, Nevill and Absinthe have convinced me that A is not the way to go. I was misreading what A entailed as well, but yes, it does seem to just be throwing Jiang Zheng under the bus to make this situation smooth for the people in power here. It feels like giving up too soon. On that note, I've flopped my original post to B. Still considering interrogating Fu Xia, but the guy knows that the evidence looks much stronger against Jiang Zheng, so it might be a case of too little, too late. And that's if he's guilty in the first place.

 

[Absinthe]

Humor me. How does the evidence look much stronger against Jiang Zheng?

 

[Esquilax]

Humor me. How does the evidence look much stronger against Jiang Zheng?

He was at the scene of the crime, Fu Xia was not. Yeah, we might be able to extract a confession out of Fu Xia (though I'm not sure how good our chances would be given the circumstances and the lack of any evidence against him when they've already got a convenient scapegoat in Jiang Zheng), but it's fairly clear that because Jiang Zheng was caught on scene after the murder holding a constable's sword that was consistent with Du Yao's wounds, they'd probably convict Jiang Zheng sooner than they would Fu Xia.

We might be able to somehow trick Fu Xia into revealing that he was at the scene of the crime - assuming he's guilty, of course - but unless he admits that he was at Du Yao's manor at the time of the murder, the evidence against Jiang Zheng is a lot stronger.

 

[Absinthe]

Except we know that Du Yao was killed by the same technique that was used on Xiaofang, and Xiaofang was attacked by someone he knows, and there's the mole in the constables who gave away the manual in the first place. We also found evidence that indicated the attacker escaped over the wall. A lot of this is incongruous with Jiang Zheng being the culprit. However, in absence of other suspects, they will go for Jiang Zheng anyway. Even though this evidence matches Fu Xia much better.

And we don't need to trick Fu Xia. He has no alibi and he matches the crime scene also. We can hand them over for torture instead. They'll accept that. Besides, we all know Fu Xia has been suspicious, two-faced, and could've been at every crime scene so far, without any alibi for what he was doing, so why would we hand over a person we know to be innocent instead?

Here's what I don't like about B votes:

“They might have escaped the city long ago,” sighs the lieutenant. “Still, there is nothing that says Jiang Zheng isn’t the murderer. He might actually know this needle technique in secret.”

Pang Xiaohu offers no insight, sharpening his axes in boredom.

“Perhaps a confession is in order,” continues the lieutenant.

“Perhaps the city simply is too insecure, allowing the assassin to escape,” says the garrison commander. “But I can see the appeal of obtaining a confession, in the absence of any other possible suspect.”

It looks like they will order Jiang Zheng tortured in an attempt to make him confess.

There is a very clear indicator here that if we do not produce a suspect, they will torture Jiang Zheng for a confession anyway. The B vote does not produce a suspect. And to top it off, we represent the constables so our word to save constable leader Jiang Zheng inherently carries insufficient weight - unless we have another suspect.

 

[Baltika9]

B is all about convincing them that the case is closed because the culprit already fled the scene. If we do that, then they can't torture Jiang Zheng for a case that's already closed, because the case is already closed. Unless, of course, we fail.

 

[Absinthe]

That made no fucking sense. The case isn't closed when the culprit escapes. The case is closed when the culprit has been brought to justice.

Again, they don't care about proper justice. Their primary concern is to close the case and appoint a successor. To do that, they need a suitable culprit to execute, and that will be Jiang Zheng unless we can give them someone else. To borrow your joke, think of Youxia City as the Russian police and yourself the investigator who has to turn over a suspect. If you say "I think he escaped," the Russian police will not declare "sorry, he escaped." They will just torture a dude to make him confess to being the assassin so that they can call the case closed.

 

[Baltika9]

Ahem,

B. You speak up, attempting to persuade them that the true assassin has fled the city. It is in fact a very likely scenario, though you cannot be sure whether it is the truth. If it works, however, you at least spare Chief Jiang from any torture, though you are also unsure what future ramifications this conclusion would have for Youxia City.