Chronicle of the solution: The Seal of the Citadel
Espionage Tier I
The espionage file has found its answer; what follows is the chronicle of it, written for those who come after us.
How the file came to the Chancellery
In Realm of the Crown they say the walls have ears — and this time the saying has proven true. What has leaked so far is hard to weigh; what might yet leak, impossible. The testimonies keep returning to the same names: Toma the Cellarer, Filip the Steward and Onufrie the Executioner. Rumor walks the deed through every corner: the cathedral crypt, the guild forge and the castle cellar. Study the testimonies at your leisure, fit them into the grid, and pronounce your verdict without haste.
The dossier opened with Toma the Cellarer, Filip the Steward and Onufrie the Executioner — a short list, as the Chancellery likes them, because short means it can be finished.
The suspects
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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
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Filip the Steward
He counts the crown's silver every evening. On some evenings the count comes out different - and he says nothing.
1.79 m tall · grey eyes · chestnut hair · right-handed
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Onufrie the Executioner
A quiet man with a loud trade. He keeps a notebook of the last words of every condemned soul.
1.92 m tall · dark eyes · no hair · right-handed
Locations
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The cathedral crypt
The old kings sleep beneath crested slabs. Now and then, someone disturbs their rest.
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The guild forge
Anvils, tongs, and a fire that never goes out. Many small metal things vanish here.
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The castle cellar
Barrels as big as carts and corners the lantern never reaches.
The testimonies on file
Nothing is missing from the list and nothing is surplus. Every row below is necessary: without it, the grid would allow several solutions at once.
- An unsigned note, slipped under the door: "the culprit was at the guild forge".
- A maid whispered it at confession: Onufrie the Executioner was in the place where the lantern never reaches.
- An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: Filip the Steward was at the cathedral crypt.
See how the verdict was reached — the culprit's name is spoken from here on
The reasoning, step by step
The investigation ran contrary to suspicion: it did not ask who could have, it cut away, row by row, whoever could not.
This particular came to light as well: “An unsigned note, slipped under the door: "the culprit was at the guild forge"”. This line spoke of the guilty party without pointing a finger — and for that very reason it was useful.
A note in the margin of the page read: “A maid whispered it at confession: Onufrie the Executioner was in the place where the lantern never reaches”. A certain match thus enters the grid, and its row and column empty at once of every other possibility.
A piece of information dearly bought showed its worth: “An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: Filip the Steward was at the cathedral crypt”. The tick goes down without hesitation, and with it fall all the other cells on that row and that column.
The close of the investigation
The Chancellery pronounced its verdict without hesitation: the culprit is Toma the Cellarer. The grid shows plainly how matters stood: Toma the Cellarer was at the guild forge. All of this follows from the findings above, without a single unproved hypothesis.
Where the others were
The Chancellery recorded the others' movements as well, because it was precisely they that closed the grid: Filip the Steward was at the cathedral crypt; Onufrie the Executioner was at the castle cellar. They look like rows of padding and they are not: the whole of the rest rests on them.
The dossier is closed, but the method stays open to anyone with the patience to count cells.
Play this dossier All mysteries
The chronicle is written from the logic of the file, not from memory. The uniqueness of the solution was demonstrated by the solver before the dossier ever became public. behind the scenes at the Chancellery.