Writing need help with planning

[Ahrihn]

Hey! So I've been writing something and I've gotten stuck.
Basically, I got my MC and her team (MC and ML are gods, plus two ghosts and a human) that need to investigate a goddess to prove that she's been kidnapping mortals and dumping them in a mountain range (where they were then killed by one of the two said ghosts)...
Problem is that all of this happened over a thousand years ago, and said goddess is dead.
So....
I have no idea how to write out their 'investigation'.
Any ideas, people?

Edit:
There is magic, Chinese fantasy —
Basically, Ghost A killed like 600+ people over the span of 1,000+. Unfortunately, the MC was the one who killed Ghost A when he was a living human — and due to corruption in the Heavenly Court, she might take the fall under the reasoning that she created Ghost A, making her the 'killer' of all the humans.
Here, either MC or Ghost A dies, which is something neither wants — instead, they're looking into the goddess who kidnapped and dumped the 600+ people into Ghost A's territory. By proving that the goddess had a hand in dumping people into Ghost A's territory, the charge would fall onto the deceased goddess rather than the MC and Ghost A, thus sparing their lives.
As for the Statue of Limitation, it's practically non-existent here due to the fact that gods and goddesses are strictly forbidden from harming innocent mortals — doing so would be banishment from the Heavens.

 

[HelloHound]

go over old diaries, artifacts that record the acts from then, surviving descendants of victims, newspapers and scholarly articles that reference what's happening during their time

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Hey! So I've been writing something and I've gotten stuck.
Basically, I got my MC and her team (MC and ML are gods, plus two ghosts and a human) that need to investigate a goddess to prove that she's been kidnapping mortals and dumping them in a mountain range (where they were then killed by one of the two said ghosts)...
Problem is that all of this happened over a thousand years ago, and said goddess is dead.
So....
I have no idea how to write out their 'investigation'.
Any ideas, people?

Statute of limitation?

 

[Kishi866]

Does ur world have magic? if so, maybe the ghosts left some kind of trace magic behind?

 

[LilRora]

I can't really give you anything good on investigations themselves, but a bit of advice from me, don't try to come up with details. You can do some vague explanations like explaining they examined magical traces or used a form of divination magic or whatever, but trying to explain how they arrived at the answer in detail, what many mysteries do, has a huge risk of backfiring. You's need an extensive foundation to make everything cohesive, complete, and logical internally that is neither too simple nor too convoluted - usually way too much work for a small, not very important part of the story.

I learned the hard way and now, when I describe things like that, I just make sure it's logical internally (so for example doesn't conflict with the general rules I set establishing the magic system, or doesn't have loopholes in the process) and move on. It's simpler and safer.

That method can even be used in mysteries, though there expaining and figuring out the detailed process is often the whole point of the story. That's a different matter then, but I understand you're not writing one.

 

[AYM]

Plan the investigation in reverse. Start with the circumstances that took place for the murder and work backward.

 

[KidBuu699]

I say either time travel or echos of the past.

Time travel I don't think I necessarily have to explain.

Echoes of the past I think would work well if that many people actually died there. Could say something like all the death cursed the land and made it haunted. That people report seeing "ghostly" figures repeating what happened there over and over again.

Only other thing I could say would if they got a necromancer to summon the ghosts of other people killed or if the Underworld exists and they could go there to interrogate the other victims. However, I will say that in a lot of chinese xiania/fantasy when a soul goes to the underworld they drink a soup that makes them forget all of their memories.

 

[QuercusMalus]

Work backwards- what evidence would exonerate them in the eyes of the heavenly court? Them figure out what would have to occur for them to get said evidence.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Plan the investigation in reverse. Start with the circumstances that took place for the murder and work backward.

I would add to this. Write the crime scene in excruciating detail. Cover the topography of these mountains, as well as the vegetation of these bodies, as well as the environment. Are there magical traces from the passage of deities? What type of magic is this deity? Do gods and goddesses affect the world by existing? As for the bodies, are they able to recover traces of those? After all, if this is an inhospitable land, with arid and rocky soil, they could leave traces of more fertile soil.
You may find places to put clues that the main character could find.


Another pathway for investigation is chronicling mortal's folklore. There may be clues. After all, 600+ mortals just removed is going to leave an indelible impression on the culture (particularly if this is rural, where there isn't too many people to begin with). It will show in rituals, and verbal traditions.
Not many, if any, of these will be smoking guns, but they do add up, and it would be worth it to the MC to look into them and compile that for their case.
Or you could look into biomagnification. If substances do not degrade in or excrete out of a creature's body (like, say, mercury) they can stay present in the creature for life. Let's say a hundred sardines eat seaweed lightly traced with mercury. Over the course of their life, they gather a bunch of mercury after eating a bunch of the lightly traced seaweed. Then a tuna eats all of those sardines, and every single bit of mercury in their bodies is now in the tuna. Is the goddess able to affect the humans and/or souls with her aura, or did she maybe purposefully affect them for her own purposes? Perhaps divine essence in unmeasurable quantities was left on their souls. If she can, and did, then might the goddess's influences build up in Ghost A's body over the course of 600+ bodies? Initially not noticeable, the goddesses' hypothetical divine essence traces can accumulate in the ghost's body that can be measured easily by magical senses of the deities. I can't imagine god power stuff is easily degraded.
This would be a glaring smoking gun.

I say either time travel or echos of the past.

Time travel I don't think I necessarily have to explain.

Echoes of the past I think would work well if that many people actually died there. Could say something like all the death cursed the land and made it haunted. That people report seeing "ghostly" figures repeating what happened there over and over again.

Only other thing I could say would if they got a necromancer to summon the ghosts of other people killed or if the Underworld exists and they could go there to interrogate the other victims. However, I will say that in a lot of chinese xiania/fantasy when a soul goes to the underworld they drink a soup that makes them forget all of their memories.

@KidBuu699 I don't know... It is pretty basic. And its ilk, like holographs, encoded/recorded messages that completely and thoroughly describe everything that happened, are pretty overused as well. From the reader's perspective, it can often feel quite contrived, and a cop out from the author not wanting to put the effort into making an engaging story.

Same for the necromancer.

Narratives that have more of a buildup (rather finding a single smoking gun that removes all of the mystery), like compiling a case through a variety of evidences does, are far more satisfying.