♪Welcome to a Game About Death♪

[As the investigation ends, you'll hear Hester's voice inviting you to the auditorium. As this happens, the twin doors on either side of the concession stand, across from the gym, will click open. You can enter on either side; both go to the same place.

When you enter the auditorium, it's dark. There's only the small lights along the walkway behind all the seats, just enough to illuminate where you're going. There's a central path between the seats, down towards where you know the stage must be. That's where you must be going, right? As you pass each row of seats, the lights at their ends flick on, marking your procession and slowly making more and more of the room visible. Shortly, you can see your destination: a circle of podiums stationed in the orchestra pit, below the lip of the darkened, curtained stage. They're all identical, labeled with a cast member's name, save for Mumble's, which is draped in black crepe and has a framed monochrome photo of him - Elijah Wood him - on top.

When you reach the podiums, the lights above the stage finally come on. It's time to meet the Wizard.

The mechanical head, with glowing green eyes, is installed above the stage and the still-closed curtain. Even if you were standing on the stage, it'd be well out of reach. It peers down at all of you, its motions fluid, and speaks with a booming, artificial-sounding voice:]

Welcome to your first trial, everyone. I am the Wizard. It's time to determine who was responsible for the murder of Mumble. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves and work together - you'll have to show teamwork if you want to leave this room alive.

You awake in an unfamiliar bed.

It’s comfortable enough, sure, but it’s certainly not yours. The room, too, is unfamiliar, especially in such heavy darkness. There seems to have been a great effort put into making it a livable space, with fuzzy rugs laid over linoleum, beds arranged as best to fit (and one bunk bed per dorm, rip whoever has the bottom bunk), and a single desk. You've also got individually labelled trunks; if you look inside yours, you'll find a yearbook with mostly blank pages, as well as a few with some interesting information. But even with all these changes it’s clear this room started it’s life as a classroom, every window hidden behind heavy dark green curtains.

To add to the strangeness of it all, your clothes have been swapped for some kind of uniform. It, though fitting your body perfectly, might feel a bit odd to some of you, as the body you have isn’t quite the same as it was before you mysteriously fell unconscious. The other important thing to note is the people in the other beds around you, all wearing the same color-coded uniform.

The hallway outside the dorms is narrow but well-lit, with fresh white walls and some scattered posters advertising some kind of midweek club meeting. The hallway goes on until, for the more contemporary of you, the pieces start to fall together as to your location: a school. Once you leave your rooms you’re free to wander as you wish but pinned up on a corkboard just outside the cafeteria there’s framed information that you might find helpful. If you explore further into the other rooms, in fact, you'll see there's an identical copy outside all of them.

In the lobby there are linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting, and a pair of glass doors that appear to lead outside. You can see out of both of them that the sun is shining brightly and there’s definitely more to see in the distance but the glass is unbreakable; you can't get out that way right now. A rolling metal sheet blocks off the hallway to the west. For the moment, both doors leading outside are locked.

It looks like you’re stuck. But hey - at least you aren’t alone.