Chronicle of the solution: The Scheming of the Dawn
Poisoning Tier I
The cup was drained and the culprit named, and this chronicle preserves the reasoning that stood against them.
How the file came to the Chancellery
Something more bitter than gall found its way to the court's table today: poison. The dose was measured with care — enough not to look like chance, too little to go unpunished. Suspicion has fallen on Elisei the Stargazer, Grigore the Cupbearer and Toma the Cellarer — and until the proof is plain, none of these names leaves the room. Rumor walks the deed through every corner: the old chapel, the abbey library and the customs cellar. Study the testimonies at your leisure, fit them into the grid, and pronounce your verdict without haste.
The names entered in the file were Elisei the Stargazer, Grigore the Cupbearer and Toma the Cellarer. The investigation regarded them all with the same coldness, as is proper.
The suspects
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Elisei the Stargazer
He reads the future in the stars and the past in men's debts. The second method fails less often.
1.67 m tall · blue eyes · greying hair · right-handed
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Grigore the Cupbearer
He tastes the king's wine before anyone else. A trade with a short future, he says, but a rich past.
1.70 m tall · brown eyes · chestnut hair · right-handed
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Toma the Cellarer
He holds the keys to every cellar in the castle. He claims the wine vanishes on its own, by "angelic evaporation."
1.73 m tall · brown eyes · red hair · left-handed
Locations
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The old chapel
Candles, incense, and a silence in which every footstep echoes like a confession.
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The abbey library
Thousands of leather-bound tomes. Some of the chains on the shelves were cut recently.
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The customs cellar
Sealed crates, thick ledgers, and air that smells of undeclared goods.
The evidence gathered on file
This much the investigation had at its disposal, not a line more. The set is minimal by construction — remove any of the rows below and the dossier becomes unsolvable again.
- An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: Toma the Cellarer was at the customs cellar.
- About the culprit, the Chancellery knows one thing for certain: the culprit was in the place with thousands of leather-bound tomes.
- The Chancellery checked twice: the suspect with greying hair never set foot in the old chapel.
Open the full reasoning — open only if you have already tried the dossier
How it was unravelled
The rule of the house is simple: what is observed enters the grid as it stands; what is declared enters only once it is settled who declared it.
The scouts brought their share as well: “An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: Toma the Cellarer was at the customs cellar”. One more certainty means, in a deduction grid, a whole fistful of impossibilities — and so it proved here.
There followed a detail that narrowed the circle: “About the culprit, the Chancellery knows one thing for certain: the culprit was in the place with thousands of leather-bound tomes”. A fact fastened to the culprit cuts without naming: whoever cannot carry it leaves the circle at once.
A detail overlooked at the start came back into the file: “The Chancellery checked twice: the suspect with greying hair never set foot in the old chapel”. One possibility fewer means, in the grid, one step nearer the only answer left.
The Chancellery's verdict
The name the grid could no longer force out of the circle is Elisei the Stargazer. The grid shows plainly how matters stood: Elisei the Stargazer was at the abbey library. Nothing was assumed along the way; every step can be redone with a pencil on paper.
Where the others were
The Chancellery recorded the others' movements as well, because it was precisely they that closed the grid: Grigore the Cupbearer was at the old chapel; Toma the Cellarer was at the customs cellar. They look like rows of padding and they are not: the whole of the rest rests on them.
It was not cleverness that unravelled the thread, but order. Order can be learned, and that is exactly why the chronicle is written.
Play this dossier All mysteries
The chronicles are written by the Enigmerra Chancellery out of the dossier's own logic: every step above is verified by the solver which proved, at publication, that the dossier has a unique solution. behind the scenes at the Chancellery.