Umineko no Naku Koro ni takes place primarily from October 4 to 5, 1986 on Rokkenjima, a small island privately owned by the wealthy Ushiromiya family. The Ushiromiya family gathers for the annual family conference, which concerns the division of assets belonging to Kinzo, the ailing family head. In addition to the twelve family members are five of their servants and Kinzo's physician, comprising a total of eighteen people. The protagonist Battler Ushiromiya, one of Kinzo's grandchildren, has been absent from the family conference for the past six years due to personal family circumstances. Upon his return, Battler becomes reacquainted with the legend of the "Golden Witch" Beatrice, who is rumored to have given Kinzo ten tons of gold in the past to revive the Ushiromiya family, which had been crippled in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. A portrait of her lies in the entrance hall of the Ushiromiya family mansion, and a puzzling epitaph is written below it. It is rumored that whoever solves the epitaph's riddle will receive the gold and become the successor to the Ushiromiya family. After a typhoon traps the family on the island, mysterious murders begin to occur, often in ways that seem impossible for a human to have committed.