Pawns and Tokens: The Great Board-game Mystery

Chapter 1

The Great Board-game Mystery began in the great Clue mansion of the late Mr. Body, long rumored to be haunted by his lingering spirit, still seeking his own murderer of many years past. It was now the subject of a new unsolved mystery when it became the site of the last known whereabouts of the respected real estate agent, Mr. Monopoly, it's first interested realtor in nearly 10 years.

Much like Mr. Boddy himself, Mr. Monopoly was a self-made millionaire and was both admired and envied by all who came to know him as the man responsible for dividing the six regions of Candy Land into streets and districts making the real estate and tourism business an economic powerhouse after the historic defeat of Lord Licorice and the reclaiming of the throne of King Kandy. Mr. Boddy's mansion had been one of the most desired properties built on Baltic Avenue in the midst of the great Gingerbread Orchard bringing with it many of his closest confidants, all immigrants of his native home of Clue Nation. It came as no surprise that they would become the primary suspects in his still unsolved murder, though rumors of an assassination plot by radical Candy Land nationalists still lingered in the mainstream.

After nearly a decade of remaining uninhabited due to fears of murder indictment and rumors of a wrathful ghost still residing in the vacant property, Mr. Monopoly and his real estate company Monopoly enterprises decided to renovate the Clue mansion and put it back on the market; a move that shook both the immigrants of Clue Nation and the native citizens of Candy Land. The plan was to hire the services of the budding construction company Chutes And Ladders Ltd to convert the property into a luxury bed and breakfast as well as museum based on it's intriguing historical significance as well as the unsolved mystery surrounding it. No one was more uncomfortable with this idea as the Mayor of Gingerbread Orchard, Sugar E. Plumpy who vowed to order the property uninhabitable if any attempt was made to alter it and persecute any such attempt as tampering with evidence, even though the case had long been closed and declared cold by the court-appointed Guess Who detective agency.

Despite this, Mayor Plumpy was quickly ruled out as a direct suspect in the later disappearance of Mr. Monopoly as the project had promised to bring in millions of tourists from around the world and with that a flood of business and income to it's residents. The signs pointed more toward a more emotionally-motivated suspect in the case; but who would want such a beloved icon and innovator as Uncle Pennybags gone? Unlike Mr. Boddy, Mr. Monopoly had no direct enemies or additional scandal surrounding his known legacy. This disappearance would lead to a re-evaluation of everything the people of Candy Land once thought of both Mr. Monopoly as well as themselves. Could there be a murderous traitor walking among them, a money-obsessed back-mail artist, or could they have been wrong about Mr. Monopoly the whole time? This would prove to be an even greater mystery than the still-unsolved murder of the last owner of the property. Perhaps the Clue mansion itself was hiding a much darker secret than the ones found in the murder investigation nearly 10 years earlier.