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Roleplay / Trustfell Round One

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"...This is one of those concepts that's going to do your head in the longer you think about it, just for reference's sake."
The Conductor

The first round of Trustfell.

Warning: all spoilers are unmarked.


  • Accidental Kidnapping: The captives were pulled through a gate by mistake.
  • Accidental Misnaming: Forgetting Mustang's recently revealed name, Elise refers to him as "Mr... Horse?" The name catches on with the others as well, especially in narrative text. Dio also has to stop himself from saying "Erina" instead of "Elise."
  • Alternate Self: Upon learning that they weren't the first class, some students theorize that alternate versions of themselves were also captured somewhere. Rakka has a breakdown over it.
  • And the Adventure Continues: The party goes off with Rick's portal gun in search of their homes.
  • Antagonist in Mourning: The Conductor is furious when Ashley is killed. It doesn't make him sympathetic, though; his "mourning process" involves executing her killer in a torturous, sadistic manner that calls back to her deepest trauma and lasts for minutes on end.
  • Bilingual Backfire: Of a sort. Asuka sends the Conductor a note in German to see if he can read it. He correctly guesses her intentions and replies in flawless German.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The students are alive and, with enough trial and error using Rick's portal gun, they can find their ways home... but they're very traumatized, their attempt at mercy went poorly, and Father is still out there, with hints given during the final trial that he's going to want revenge once he hears what they've done.
  • Bizarre Taste in Food: One way to tell that it's Envy and not Dio in the kitchen at night is that his idea of a midnight snack is a disaster cobbled together from random items from the fridge.
  • Blood Bath: Pre-emptively banned by Rule 17, just in case anybody wanted to try.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Does not actually occur, but Bakugou calls the Conductor a siscon a couple of times.
  • Burn Baby Burn: The freed captives toss all the things they no longer want to deal with, including many of their personal files, onto Kimblee's funeral pyre in the end.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The survivors, barring Susan and Sol, vote to spare the Conductor for this reason. It doesn't work out.
  • Christmas Miracle: It's Christmas morning when, suddenly, the sunroom unlocks and the dead are finally able to send their letters to the living.
  • Crossover Ship: Inevitable with panfandom roleplay. Jean/Weiss and Blue/Yuuri are confirmed canon and a few others are left ambiguous in the end.invoked
  • Convenience Store Gift Shopping: Rick's Christmas gift to the living is just a roll of TP.
  • Couldn't Find a Pen: The sixth case features many messages in both chicken and human blood.
  • Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Asuka and Ashley in the dead world, very slowly and initially just out of necessity. They start to contemplate what went on between them when Asuka tells Ashley how she was sadistically executed for Ashley's murder and eventually repair their relationship when Ashley gets wasted at the bar and Asuka listens to her and helps her back to her room.
  • Cry Laughing: Some of the characters in the end, particularly Undyne when she revives.
  • Cue the Sun: After weeks of no natural light, the survivors finally find a sunroom on the top floor.
  • Darkness Equals Death: Thinking he can kill the shadow, Logan walks the dark hallways without a flashlight or fire. It doesn't exactly go well.
  • Eating the Enemy: The survivors at least consider giving the Conductor's body to Kaneki.
  • Edible Theme Naming: Elise continues hers for her livestock by naming one of the chickens Magenbrot.
  • Ending Memorial Service: The final post of Round 1 starts with Jean lighting a funeral pyre for Kimblee.
  • The End... Or Is It?: The captives in the end have defeated the Conductor and just want to go home, but the villain could well strike again with someone else.
    Susan: We've done everything we could, I think. He was right — we really can't just storm up and kill God. Maybe some of us could take care of it later, but the way we are now? All we can do is go home and try to recover.
  • El Cid Ploy: Twisted when Kimductor insists that his "shadow friend" is alive and unrelated to the dead man found in the ballroom. In this case, the mastermind is pretending his ally is alive, rather than the followers pretending their leader is.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Actually averted for the guy who may as well be the Trope Namer. Everyone uses his actual name.
  • Eyepatch of Power: Three of them. And they're all dead by the end of week three.
  • Eye Scream: Used in the third case when Ashley, fighting back against Asuka, goes for her eye with scissors. Twisted in that it was the eye Asuka had already lost.
  • Facial Horror: Ashley when she's shot in the head and Asuka when she reveals that she's been stabbed in her empty eye socket.
  • Faint in Shock: Blue faints when she finds the gory second crime scene.
  • Fan Disservice: Rick insists on every excuse to strip in public. Eventually, the Conductor is disgusted enough to start making rules to stop him!
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Mercy was not the correct choice. Invoked by Kimblee in response, just before he tries to kill the survivors.
    "You would spare someone who's never done anything for you – I told you that I received you as a mistake. Why do you think that your survival matters enough to me to send you all back where you came from – why do you think I would bother, when this entire setup was designed to kill you from the start?"
  • Flaming Sword: Susan famously uses one to land the final blow on Kimblee.
  • Forbidden Chekhov's Gun: The flavour text for the "Potion" item outright tells you not to drink it. It's used to revive Logan mid-game (very briefly) and again to bring back all the dead.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Accidental when contrast is built up between Lisbeth in backstory and Susan in the ending. Lisbeth was working for Kimblee despite her misgivings, tried to stab him in the face, and he killed her. Come the final trial, Susan was going to let Kimblee live despite her misgivings, he tries to kill her and the others, and she stabs him in the face. Successfully.
    • Sukuyo, in the aftermath of Logan's ill-fated fight with the shadow, announces, "We need to invest in flaming swords to prevent this from ever happening again!" As shown in the round's signature scene, The Cuckoolander Was Right.
  • Forged Message: There are two: one from Cabanela (actually Dio) and one from Mordecai (actually Rick). Sukuyo's looked suspicious, but she actually did write it.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The "Teen Asshole Squad," composed of the survivor pool's teenagers aside from Blue, who belongs to another Cast Herd. Bakugou is sanguine, Sol is choleric, Weiss is melancholic, and Jean is phlegmatic.
  • Frame-Up: Cabanela is the victim of one in case five, where a note in his handwriting was used to lure out the victim, who was also found with holding one of his regains. It turns out the latter was a coincidence.
  • Full-Name Basis: Mordecai to most everyone, and Rick to Dio just to annoy him.
  • Giving Radio to the Romans: A Running Gag is the ever-increasing Long List of modern concepts that Logan is urged to bring back to Albion.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Conductor's "God." The characters aren't sure what to do in the end, knowing he's still out there.
  • Have You Told Anyone Else?: Inverted and discussed. Ashley tells Dio that she hasn't told anyone about finding his journal. Dio replies that she shouldn't have told him that because, if he were going to kill her over the contents, he'd be more likely to if he knew the secret would die with her.
  • Having a Blast: The stolen superpower of two students, one of whom eventually starts compensating. The Conductor has the same ability.
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • Logan goes unresponsive at Reaver's execution, where he fears what will happen to his home.
    • Half the remaining game when Logan is killed by the shadow monster - and they're there to witness it the second time.
  • Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: A few characters start to question Elise in the sixth trial when she suddenly drops the topic she was going after. She's actually just trying not to mention the ghosts in front of the Conductor, since she'd been telling him that the seances were silly and ineffectual and the other students would surely pipe in saying they were real.
  • Hurricane of Puns: On the ghosts' end, spectating the final trial devolved into this for several hundred comments.
  • I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: Tabby only meant to kill one person; she wanted Mordecai as a witness so she could be sent to the execution pit, but the wound she gave him was accidentally fatal.
  • In-Universe Catharsis: So many characters beat up on or otherwise desecrated Kimblee's corpse.
  • Kick the Morality Pet: Asuka does this deliberately, enacting a plot to kill her closest friend to break her bonds because she's afraid of what having them will do to her. When she's caught, most of the school turns on her, and she spends a lot of time and development in deadland working through what she's done.
  • Killed Off for Real: An unnamed chicken and the Conductor.
  • The Kingslayer: The shadow's treated as a bigger threat after killing Logan.
  • Lizard Folk: Mordecai takes a metaphor literally and wonders why the Conductor would be one of these if he said he was human. (He's not really a lizard.)
  • Losing Your Head: When Dio's execution beheads him, his still-living head starts attacking, screaming, and hopping around by its thrashing blood vessels.
  • Malicious Misnaming: Those who call Kimblee "Kimberly."
  • Maybe Ever After: Some pairings, like Morty/Sol or Bakugou/Rakka, are left up in the air as to their future.
  • Mercy Kill: What the ghosts' killing Mustang boils down to, though they don't know it at the time.
  • Mistaken for Servant: In the opening log, Elise thinks the other captives are her servants.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Youko, you really shouldn't have asked the Conductor about the ghosts.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted when Blue asks the Conductor for a communal supply of tampons.
  • Now or Never Kiss: Weiss gives one to Jean just before the final investigation.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: The Conductor adds more and more rules to the list to cut the captives off whenever they start to actually pose a threat to him, may well accidentally blow the place up, or are just getting annoying.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sol and Bakugou realize that there's something wrong at the seventh trial when Cabanela, who'd always refrained from judging the killers, calls this one "a real monster."
  • Original Generation: Lisbeth and the chickens, but not the Conductor.
  • "Open!" Says Me: A rule is made against this when the locked doors appear. Dio kicks down a couple of doors in the epilogue.
  • Dream Reality Check: Undyne pinches herself to prove that she and the other dead really did revive and she's not dreaming it up.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: Envy tries to avert this by not getting into conversations and shapeshifting less popular people. Still, when Beedrill is secretly watching, the Pokémon finds it weird that "Dio" would take anything from the fridge; the real Dio, after all, "eats like a Golbat" (i.e. drinking blood).
  • Passing Notes in Class: The group tends to pass notes during meetings, either because they suspect the Conductor to be listening in or because they don't trust the whole group. Susan compares it to passing notes in elementary school.
  • Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Blue runs into body after body when she thinks she might be safe this week.
  • Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: The Conductor is a smarmy, self-serving self-described gentleman, and even the sweet and polite members of the survivor pool become worn out, start acting improperly, and more often than not end up screaming, ignoring him, and/or dropping F-bombs in public.
  • Precision F-Strike: Sukuyo calling Morty's murderer an SOB when she's usually so sweet and polite.
  • Profane Last Words: Did we really expect anything else from Rick?
  • Ragnarök Proofing: Graceside survived the apocalypse outside its doors. Foreshadowed in case 6, where it's noted that the place seems to be built to withstand a bombing.
  • Red Herring Mole: Near the end of the game, the Conductor is fed up with The Mole and outs her identity to the group... sort of; he puts three options out there and tells the Participants that one of them was working for him and they should figure out which one isn't the red herring. Of course, it's not that simple. Unknown to the rest of the group or to each other, Sukuyo, Elise, and Blue were all the Conductor's moles.
  • Resurrective Immortality: Logan displays this when the shadow counterattacks, but only once. It turns out to not be an ability of his, but an effect of a potion.
  • Rewatch Bonus: In week one, Logan is paranoid that ghosts are responsible for leaving coins for the students in their bedrooms while they sleep. That's exactly what it was.
  • Right-Hand Attack Dog: The Participants at first assume that the shadow is this, but it turns out to be sentient and not a pet; the Conductor treats it more like a coworker.
  • Security Cling: Some of the younger students cling onto Logan out of worry when he shows up in the dead realm.
  • Series Fauxnale: Endgame, since the series was going to be one round and extended to six. That's also why the game ended up with multiple game communities and mod journals.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: When Ashley and Asuka are reading the Harry Potter series. Ashley ships canon and Asuka ships Harmony. They even get into a screaming match over it in the middle of the final trial!invoked
  • Shoe Slap: Sol gets so worked up that she chucks both of her shoes at Cabanela from across the room.
  • Smooch of Victory: Blue and Yuuri, after the latter is revived post-Final Trial.
  • So What Do We Do Now?: The Participants largely do want to keep things from getting worse after they've dealt with the Conductor, but have no way to do so, and return hopelessly to their lives.
  • Stalker Shrine: Sol discovers what she calls a "stalker room," wallpapered with photos of the Participants, especially the ones Envy impersonated or considered impersonating.
  • Team Pet: A whole flock of chickens, including Hibiki's favourite, fluffy mascot Dorika.
  • Torture Always Works: The real reason Kimblee knows so much about his captives.
  • Trash Can Bonfire: Sukuyo lights one in the aftermath of Logan's death. She clings to it the whole night in fear of the shadow monster.
  • Trick Bomb: Tabby starts making flashbangs, which she and others use to fight the shadow monster. They quickly get banned from the courtroom.
  • Turned Against Their Masters: While this isn't actually what happened, Blue and Bakugou theorize that the body last found in the ballroom — actually Mustang — could be the Conductor, attacked by his "shadow friend."
  • Two Dun It: The Conductor tells Rick that it's possible for two culprits to win by getting away with the same murder. Rick then plans to convince Morty to kill someone with him. However, Morty is killed before he can.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: After running into corpse after corpse, Blue's reactions go from screaming to hiding behind other people to eventually just calling out "hey, there's another dead guy!"
  • Uptown Girl: Refined heiress Weiss and common soldier Jean become an item.
  • Valentine's Day Episode: Because mixed-up memories and being in a murdercan make it hard to tell the date (not to mention her canon's season-based calendar), Elise declares that it must be Valentine's Day on December 14th. She proceeds to give chocolate cookies to the entire remaining male cast, including the Conductor!
  • Violence Really Is the Answer: Trying to spare the mastermind instead of kill him almost bad-ended the game.
  • Was Once a Man: The Shadow/Mustang, who was human before being experimented on.
  • Weakened by the Light: Not just Dio; the shadow monster too, and not just to sunlight.
  • Welcome Back, Traitor: To Blue and Elise after the mole reveal. After the Conductor had betrayed them for protecting the ghosts, the other captives found it practical, plus Blue had intended to play the Conductor from the start and Elise had already had a change of heart and quit.
  • Wham Episode: The final trial, by far, when everybody finds out just where they are and who's behind it all.
  • Wham Line: The Conductor's in the seventh trial.
    "Did you really think I would be stupid enough to rely on the word of one person?"
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: It's stated outright that chickens don't have souls, but Pokémon do.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Unique?: Rakka wonders this when her fellow captives throw around the theory that they might not be the only versions of themselves out there or even the only ones to come to Graceside, which isn't proven in Round 1 itself, but the premise of Round 6 cements it.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Many of the killers are adults, and their victims defenceless children. It reaches such a noticeable degree that Bakugou starts to comment on it.
  • Wrong-Name Outburst:
    • During the sixth trial Youko and Bakugou briefly squabble, leading to this exchange:
      "NO STEAK FOR A MONTH, KATSUKI."
      "I CAN MAKE MY OWN STEAK NOW ANYWAY, MOM!!"
    • After being revived, Rakka tearfully calls Susan "Mom."
  • You Monster!: Hibiki says this to Asuka, with the backing of most and the judgment of others, for killing her own friend. Cabanela admonishes her for it, but later says it himself, about himself.
  • Your Magic's No Good Here: Kimblee admits that he actually doesn't know why everyone was Brought Down to Normal and the "fee paid to the Gate" theory is only a theory, with this being his secondary hypothesis.
  • Your Soul Is Mine!: Thanks to the backgrounds of several of the deceased, their theories lead them to this conclusion. They were wrong, and the truth was much simpler.

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