The Murder-Free Hotel (TVT
, TC) is a thread in The Murderverse where no killing game is taking place; the various characters can just hang around in the host's tower hotel. The lack of a Dwindling Party naturally makes it the longest-running thread in the 'verse, and the one where the most Character Development usually happens.
In July 2021, the original setting was brought to its end, and the story continued with Murder-Free II: The Portaling Revengeance.
Murder-Free contains examples of:
- 420, Blaze It: During a discussion about how nobody actually knows what year it is in the setting, Vivi jokingly declares the year to be 42,069, to the amusement of several (though Jocelyn grumps that sex and weed are only funny in the form of actual jokes and you can't just say "the funny numbers" for easy laughs).
- Asbestos-Free Cereal: The thread takes place in the eponymous "Murder-Free Hotel". The nature of the 'verse means that this disclaimer actually is meaningful, but the characters don't necessarily see it that way in-universe.
- Cats Hate Water: The cure for the cat transformation Virus turns out to be dousing the afflicted in water. G'raha Tia, helping analyze the virus after the fact, points out that felines in general are repelled by the umbral-aspected aether in water.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Characters will come and go as their roleplayers see fit, but some are more firmly gone than others (usually established by
Word of God):- Pizzacatcher Cutbug's sisters quietly vanished from the story after a while.
- Cinderace is confirmed not to be returning.
- G'raha Tia and Y'shtola Rhul's presence was tied directly to Vivi's self-insert status, so when that was retconned away, they went away with it.
- Closed Circle: Leaving the hotel is impossible, not so much because of any barrier, but because there's nowhere to go — the world simply does not exist anymore after a certain point.
- Fun with Acronyms: Gary Busey claims as part of his Word Salad Philosophy that "trust" stands for "talking realistically understanding sacred truth".
- Inn Between the Worlds: This thread takes place in the "Murder-Free Hotel", a tower hotel in one of the Host's personal pocket dimensions. Murdergame characters have a mostly-unexplainednote tendency to just, kinda, show up.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Depending on the Writer, some characters in the hotel gain quirks related to their death, such as Amanda having a headache and messy hair from being electrocuted and hitting her head on an elevator, Junko Enoshima's body seperated into pieces from being pulled apart, and Moona Hoshinova having thousands of scars from being sliced into many little pieces.
- LOL, 69: During a discussion about how nobody actually knows what year it is in the setting, Vivi jokingly declares the year to be 42,069, to the amusement of several (though Jocelyn grumps that sex and weed are only funny in the form of actual jokes and you can't just say "the funny numbers" for easy laughs).
- Loose Canon: The thread was initially explicitly an Alternate Universe, but plotlines crossing over with other threads became common enough that it's now left up to the individual roleplayers whether they want to include events from this thread in their characters' development.
- Mythology Gag: When using the host's powers to summon Cutbug's siblings, Vivi, a Final Fantasy XIV OC, says "Throw wide the damned gates!", in reference to the Arc Words that led up to the Shadowbringers expansion.
- Open Secret: Even before the official Reveal that V is a reincarnation of Vivi Elakha, it is obvious to many characters that the Host has some connection to Vivi, ironically partly because of her actions in hiding this fact.
- Prison Dimension: "Gay baby jail" is a Pocket Dimension full of weighted blankets where the host can send anyone if they're causing too much trouble. Stew was sent there for a time after attempting suicide over being apparently upstaged by Pamela, and the Spy was sent afterwards for criticizing the Host's decision to do this. Much later, after Vivi gets the pink smoke, she also sends Hydroxyl there, after it's evident that many of the Hotel's residents cannot live peacefully with him around.
- Shipper on Deck: Travis, Vivi, Metabomb, Stew, and approximately every other character who ever observes them interacting with each other is cheering for Ikei and Pizzacatcher Cutbug to acknowledge their damn feelings and get together.
Murder-Free II contains examples of:
- Brown Note: The world behind the cyan portal has something making an unsettling whirring and clicking noise that makes Kellensea very ill. The explorers eventually learn that it's a "Modified Deterrence System" — that is to say a System for the Deterrence of people who are Modified.
- Call-Back:
- The red portal leads to a wintry prison which seems to be the same one where God Complex took place.
- The magenta portal leads to an abandoned mansion that appears to be the setting of Sinister Starlight.
- The indigo portal leads to a VR research center that might be where Murder RPG was developed.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: "The Portaling Revengeance". "Portaling" is a reference to the gimmick of the reboot, in which the hotel has become a Portal Crossroad World, but the use of the present participle is for the same reason as the inclusion of "Revengeance" — a gag on silly sequel titles.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The death of V in The Turned Tables sets off contingency magic that pushes things to the next stage of her anti-TM-Awe plan — her Domain Holder powers get anchored to Vivi so V's death doesn't take the whole place with her, and portals start opening up into various dimensions. Inconveniently, she didn't leave any notes as to why particular dimensions were selected, obligating the residents to explore and figure out what might be done there on their own.
- Revenge of the Sequel: Parodied; despite the "Revengeance" in the name, nobody in this thread has any particular interest in seeking revenge.
