Chronicle of the solution: The Sign of the Blazon
Forged decree Tier II
The lying seal has been prised from the hand that pressed it, and the road to that hand is written out below.
The dossier as it reached the desk
A decree bearing a lying seal has left the Chancellery, and its parchment has already done damage. The forgery is skilled: only an eye trained on the archives found its flaw. On the Chancellery's list stand Iustin the Mariner, Sir Bogdan de Fag, Castellan Ursu and Filip the Steward; one of these names covers a lie. Rumor walks the deed through every corner: the guild forge, the old chapel, the tourney field and the queen's garden. Open the grid, weigh every clue, and pronounce your verdict: the Chancellery awaits only your signature.
Called to judgement were Iustin the Mariner, Sir Bogdan de Fag, Castellan Ursu and Filip the Steward. Each had somewhere to begin a story; one alone had reason to change it.
The suspects
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Iustin the Mariner
He brings goods from ports with unpronounceable names. Half the cargo never appears in the customs records.
1.78 m tall · blue eyes · black hair · left-handed
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Sir Bogdan de Fag
He pawned his armour to pay his tavern debts. Honour, he says, does not rust.
1.85 m tall · blue eyes · brown hair · right-handed
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Castellan Ursu
He keeps the fortress dungeon and the tally of those who leave other than they entered.
1.90 m tall · dark eyes · black hair · right-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
Locations
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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 old chapel
Candles, incense, and a silence in which every footstep echoes like a confession.
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The tourney field
Empty stands outside festival days. An excellent place for meetings that never happened.
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The queen's garden
Roses trimmed to a line and paths you may walk only by invitation. At night, the hedge has ears.
Objects
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The royal seal
Whoever holds it can seal any decree. Which is why it should not be wandering the kingdom.
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The customs scales
Copper pans, sealed weights. One of the weights rings hollow.
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The ledger of accounts
Neat columns of figures, with one page torn out exactly at mid-month.
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The small wine cask
Arin wine, the good year. The bung was pulled and put back by an unskilled hand.
Moments
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At dawn
When the citadel is barely waking and the guards still doze.
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After matins
The hour after the morning service, when the abbey empties.
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At noon
Midday, with bustle in the markets and silence in the alcoves.
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At dusk
When the shadows lengthen and the lanterns are not yet lit.
What the Chancellery had to hand
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.
- The gate guard swears: the queen's garden and the small wine cask go together.
- In the Chancellery's ledger it stands in black and white: Filip the Steward handled the small wine cask.
- The healer says it with a raised finger: if Sir Bogdan de Fag handled the royal seal, then Sir Bogdan de Fag was at the guild forge.
- An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: the ledger of accounts matches that hour: after matins.
- Every scout reports the same about the culprit: the culprit handled the ledger of accounts.
- The chronicler notes drily: Castellan Ursu was there at dawn, whatever the court may say.
- Two witnesses, upon their crest: the suspect with brown hair never touched the customs scales.
- The tracks in the dust do not lie: the old chapel matches that hour: after matins.
- Whatever the market gossips: Sir Bogdan de Fag never set foot in the old chapel.
- The chronicler notes drily: the small wine cask matches that hour: at dusk, whatever the court may say.
Read the unravelling, step by step — the culprit's name is spoken from here on
How the circle closed
The start was not a culprit hunted by candlelight but whatever could be proved. The rest followed of itself, by cutting.
A witness of good faith cleared up one more corner: “The gate guard swears: the queen's garden and the small wine cask go together”. One more certainty means, in a deduction grid, a whole fistful of impossibilities — and so it proved here.
The gate register had kept a trace of its own: “In the Chancellery's ledger it stands in black and white: Filip the Steward handled the small wine cask”. Once the tick was placed, the investigation had nothing left to argue on that row and moved on.
It was set down, for whoever reads after us: “The healer says it with a raised finger: if Sir Bogdan de Fag handled the royal seal, then Sir Bogdan de Fag was at the guild forge”. Here patience was needed: this line did no work until others had prepared the ground for it.
There followed that run of small findings which, together, decide everything: “An honest-faced witness saw it plainly: the ledger of accounts matches that hour: after matins”; “Every scout reports the same about the culprit: the culprit handled the ledger of accounts”; “The chronicler notes drily: Castellan Ursu was there at dawn, whatever the court may say”; “Two witnesses, upon their crest: the suspect with brown hair never touched the customs scales”; “The tracks in the dust do not lie: the old chapel matches that hour: after matins”. Each closed a door, and by the last of them only one stood open.
The next line was the one that changed the reckoning: “Whatever the market gossips: Sir Bogdan de Fag never set foot in the old chapel”. The negation does not say who did it, but it says who did not — and in the end that is enough.
There followed a detail that narrowed the circle: “The chronicler notes drily: the small wine cask matches that hour: at dusk, whatever the court may say”. A certain match thus enters the grid, and its row and column empty at once of every other possibility.
The close of the investigation
After every cut, one possible suspect was left in the file: Iustin the Mariner. At the hour in question, Iustin the Mariner was at the old chapel, handled the ledger of accounts and was there after matins. The verdict stands on its own, out of the findings above.
What became of the others
The grid took them out of the circle one by one, place in the story and all: Sir Bogdan de Fag was at the guild forge, handled the royal seal and was there at noon; Castellan Ursu was at the tourney field, handled the customs scales and was there at dawn; Filip the Steward was at the queen's garden, handled the small wine cask and was there at dusk. 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
Everything you read above rests on the dossier itself. The Chancellery's solver checked, at publication, that the given clues yield exactly one solution — no more, and not none. behind the scenes at the Chancellery.