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Chronicle of the solution: The Secret of Winter

Disappearance Tier I

The disappearance file has closed. The chronicle below retraces, step by step, how the circle was drawn tight.

What the file said when it was opened

A disappearance troubles the citadel, and rumor grows faster than truth. Open searches have brought nothing; the time has come for questions asked aslant. The testimonies keep returning to the same names: Ban Radu the Silent, Brother Anselm and Countess Velica de Arin. The places named in the testimonies — the watchtower, the north wall and the great stable — each await their turn under scrutiny. Take up the quill, follow the thread of the clues, and set your seal upon the verdict.

Suspicion settled on these: Ban Radu the Silent, Brother Anselm and Countess Velica de Arin. From then on the names mattered less than what could be proved about each.

The suspects

Locations

The findings and the testimonies

These are all the findings and testimonies the Chancellery had to hand — not one more. The set is minimal by construction: take out a single row and the verdict can no longer be demonstrated.

  1. The customs register is clear: Ban Radu the Silent never set foot in the place from which you see everything.
  2. Every scout reports the same about the culprit: the culprit was at the watchtower.
  3. The chronicler notes drily: Brother Anselm was in the place the patrol skirts when the wind blows, whatever the court may say.
Reveal the Chancellery's reasoning — open only if you have already tried the dossier

The reasoning, step by step

The start was not a culprit hunted by candlelight but whatever could be proved. The rest followed of itself, by cutting.

A report from the watch brought clarity: “The customs register is clear: Ban Radu the Silent never set foot in the place from which you see everything”. A cell is struck out, and with it a whole possibility that until then looked as good as any other.

Then this finding entered the file: “Every scout reports the same about the culprit: the culprit was at the watchtower”. One attribute of the culprit, no more. Enough, though, to leave on the list only whoever has it.

A note in the margin of the page read: “The chronicler notes drily: Brother Anselm was in the place the patrol skirts when the wind blows, whatever the court may say”. From then on that cell could no longer be disputed, and the dispute moved one row down.

The culprit's name

At the end of the grid one name alone remained: Countess Velica de Arin. At the hour in question, Countess Velica de Arin was at the watchtower. Nothing was assumed along the way; every step can be redone with a pencil on paper.

What became of the others

The remaining suspects received their release from the grid too: Ban Radu the Silent was at the great stable; Brother Anselm was at the north wall. It is these acquittals that made the verdict possible: without them, room for doubt would have remained.

The truth did not surface in a flash of insight but out of a run of small cuts, every one of them checkable.

Play this dossier All mysteries

This chronicle is no free retelling: it rises directly out of the dossier's logic, and every step passed through the solver which proved, before publication, that the solution is unique. behind the scenes at the Chancellery.