Murder Party · ready to clone
A scenario by Murder Maker
Katarraktis, tonight. Meridian 'Merry' Okafor — the district's memory-notary, keeper of every escrowed alibi, contract and confession — is dead in her own extraction chair, her final sixty seconds cut cleanly out of her head. By sprawl custom her vault goes under the hammer the same night; at 03:00 a corporate seizure team takes everything left unsold. Everyone who ever trusted her with a memory is here, bidding to buy themselves back. And six mourners each carry a verified first-person memory of holding her hand as she died — same minute, same chair. Human beings don't come in six.
Meridian 'Merry' Okafor
Victim NPC
The district memory-notary: twelve years of the sprawl's alibis, contracts and confessions in her escrow vault. Found dead tonight at 23:35 in her own extraction chair, her last minute excised. This auction is her wake.
Ossian Vey
Suspect
Second-chair notary of the district — silver-tongued, immaculate, Merry's professional rival for a decade. He countersigned the seizure manifest at 22:35 as guild law requires, and says he left before eleven for…
Detective Ash Moreno
Detective
A sprawl homicide detective, off-duty, signed in tonight as a private mourner. Steady hands, tired eyes. She remembers sitting with Merry as she slipped away, and has said so, quietly, twice.
Calla Brandt
Suspect
Lachesis Asset Recovery's field officer, arrived hours ahead of her own breach team 'as a courtesy.' Every lot sold before 03:00 is theft from her employer, and her smile says she knows exactly how long two and a half…
Ren 'Fivepoints' Okafor
Suspect
Merry's estranged ex and the vault's co-signer — the door does not open without his living hand on the lock. He has been taking meetings all night about what his signature costs.
Silas Pin
Suspect
The sprawl's finest mint-artist — memories so clean they pass every street scanner. Tonight he is a mourner like everyone else, with a folding rig on the mezzanine and a lot of his own somewhere in the vault.
Auntie Jaxa
Suspect
Auntie Jaxa runs the hammer tonight — the fixer every faction owes and none can price. She takes her cut in secrets, not scrip, and she has never once auctioned a lot she did not already understand.
Yuki Onda
Witness
The wet-room tech who keeps the extraction chairs sweet. She logged tonight's sessions, found the body, and has answered every question since in a voice like a held breath.
Marlow Deng
Suspect
House Tanaka's debt-collector — polite, enormous, patient. One of the vault's lots is his own confession, and everyone knows Tanaka does not let its people be owned by anyone else.
Petra Volkov
Suspect
Old money that stopped being money — Petra Volkov, whose family fortune stands on a claim only she can still prove. She has brought every scrip she has left, and it is visibly not calm money.
Cricket
Witness
A street courier with chapel beads and fast shoes, still wearing tonight's delivery tag. Merry's last consignment rode in her satchel at 22:50, and half the room has already asked her the same question.
Brother Anselm
Witness
Brother Anselm of the Analog Chapel keeps the Faraday lounge: no signal, no record, no witness but him. He has spent twenty years arguing that an unrecorded life is the only honest one, and tonight the whole sprawl…
Mama Noor
Witness NPC
The mezzanine cook. Nobody remembers a Katarraktis night she wasn't stirring something.
The final lot has no name, no provenance, and a reserve price of nothing. At 02:45 the house plays it aloud. Everyone in the room has already decided what they hope it is.
Somewhere in this building is a craftsman who can sell you a better yesterday. Business, tonight, is very good — and one client walked away unserved.
Her last consignment left the office an hour before she died — paid triple, carried fast, destination whispered. Half the room is hunting the satchel. The satchel is empty.
Six mourners remember holding her hand as she died. Same minute. Same chair. The house will honor exactly one of them — prove yours, or break theirs.
Somebody inherits the right to hold the district's memory. The polite question is who deserves it. The real question is what the last keeper found before she died.
At 03:00 the corporation takes whatever is left. Everything before that is negotiation — loud, priced by the minute, and armed.
Katarraktis, tonight. Meridian 'Merry' Okafor — the district's memory-notary, keeper of every escrowed alibi, contract and confession — is dead in her own extraction chair, her…
Cloning is free. Every name, relationship and secret is yours to edit.
