VALUABLE OPPORTUNITY FOR HONOURABLE CITIZENS

Master Commissioner Alexis Telemova of the Imperial Commission would be grateful for citizens to assist with a matter of great importance to the Commission.

As the nature of the matter may honour volunteers with exposure to some of the workings of the Commission, external volunteers will be required to give their word not to disclose anything they discover of these workings before being admitted to the Commission.

The Master Commissioner seeks only 4 volunteers: in the very likely case that more than 4 honourable citizens apply, lottery will be used to select the lucky volunteers. Successful applicants will be contacted by the Imperial Commission.

• Carmen Montiel - Emma
• Tenebris - Dan
• Thessalia Bryven - JC
• Carta Vance - Joe

The party are recruited by Grand Commissioner Telemova to investigate something having gone dramatically wrong currently flooding the Experimental Wing of the Imperial Commission with vapourised Ichor. She presents the party with a small candle in a jar which is an artefact to keep them from being affected by the vapourised ichor. As soon as they enter the Commission through the back entrance, the door closes behind them and the Bell of Endings chimes.

With no choice but to press onward, the party find the Commission is pitch black, filled with swirling black ichor occasionally too dense to move on through without effort. In the darkness, strange creatures move. Some, tall darker silhouettes in the mist, latch onto specific targets and disappear into the darkness; others lurk and stab when they get the chance. Thess is pulled down by one of the taller creatures early, and has her mind infected. She returns to attack the party, who upon clearing their immediate surroundings of monsters turn their minds to fixing Thess: Tenebris cures Thess of the Black Ichor possession of her mind and they push on.

The creatures are starting to get smarter and more varied, and the party are assaulted by vulture-like creatures as well as Elect who seem to be working under their own orders. The Elect are brutal to the party, and this time when Thess falls, she falls for good, dying her first death.

With no sign of Thess, the others push on into a spell of a vision-like state, the sort anyone who has used the EVICT chamber before will recognise. A figure appears, standing before some pipes, who Tenebris identifies as Katya Rastova, someone important to the foundation of the Commission. They attempt to work with her to complete the other half of a vision they're having, and Thess returns to them during this, resulting in argument about who was responsible for her death.

Carta forges a connection with Katya, gaining small information about who she is, but when Carmen advances the vision but cannot advance it any further Carta forges that connection again and the vision becomes real. A wraith-like Katya, still not quite human, not quite memory, comes screaming at them, screaming to know why they've done this, demanding they put her back. Carta refuses to do so, and the others beat the wraith into submission, but while they attempt to interrogate her, a powerful denizen of Connection makes its way along the thread: Blind Adoration. Overjoyed to find Katya, Blind Adoration starts planning their life together. Carta starts working on severing the thread, but Thess beats Carta to it and executes the wraith Katya. Blind Adoration is furious, and curses Thess for her deed.

Having wrung Katya for information, the party understand they need to fix two main pipes and come across the first of them under heavy attack from vulture-like beings that band together to work to destroy it. The party push through them and between them they're able to charge through to defend it. The battle is against them though until Carmen uses Benediction on the eye in her hand to enhance the power of it against what she's fighting. Armed with supreme Ichor power, Ichor creatures flee before her and the party pull together to defend the pipe as Tenebris repairs it. Once the pipe has been repaired though, Carmen is struck by a whirlwind of Ichor attempting to wrest control of her from herself. She retains the control and the party rest for a moment.

They move on into an overlap with Conflict, where the Lord of Fire, alerted to the situation by Thess, introduces the Court of the Duchy of Ire who challenge the party to a duel to the death. It quickly transpires that the Courtiers are very very strong at fighting physically and so a battle of wits is decreed. The party insult their way past the courtiers and find themselves in a denser section of Ichor.

Waiting for the Ichor to clear again, Carta makes a connection with a vial of Black Ichor, completing a chain of connections he's been making with Ichor Creatures the whole adventure. He talks to it, asking what it can give him, but both he and it are reluctant to give the other something, and he severs the connection before the affliction growing on him can get stronger than Tenebris can tackle. Tenebris fixes this affliction as two figures approach: two Watchers of the Bureaucracy who report they've discovered Heresy in the Commission that they must report.

The party follow them past some Secret Keeper mutants, with Carmen unsure about them, but the Watchers get away. The party lay chase up a pipe that Tenebris makes climbable, and chase pursued by a rising tide of densest Black Ichor. At the top, Carmen declares the Watchers to be corrupted by Ichor and insist they submit to her investigation. They refuse, and an argument breaks out until all are assaulted by a Vulture which is itself slain by the entrance of more Commissioners, including Grand Commissioner Dmitri Romov.

Romov asks the party what they've discovered and Carmen explains the Watchers are corrupted by Ichor. Romov demands their execution, which is dealt, and then demands the execution of Carta, Thess and Tenebris for knowing too much. The vulture is revived by Romov and set upon them, and the Commissioners brought with Romov killed for knowing too much. Tenebris flees down a pipe, and Carta completes a ritual to teleport to one of his keystones. Thess is stabilised and Romov, Thess, and Carmen discuss what to do with her. Thess does not fail Romov's tests for joining the Cult of the Mystikos and so Romov places Thess under Carmen's jurisdiction, under the knowledge that Thess will suffer Consequences should she fail them.

With two survivors, Romov opens a door and leads them into the light of the main Commission building.

Carmen and Thess follow Romov out of the experimental wing and to a bright office with pipes running across the ceiling. There, Carmen delivers a full report on what happened, including her anger at Katya Rastova for words against the Mystikos - the full encounter Romov makes her and Thess go over in excruciating detail - and her experience using Benediction on her hand to control the Ichor Creatures. Thess remarks that the party left her for dead, twice, but Romov notes that as she is alive now that is inconsequential.

Carmen inquires as to how it was known Tenebris was a follower of a false idol, and Romov replies that they were not certain until Carmen mentioned it. They knew there was a false Mystikos hiding somewhere under the Commission because they had had reports of its existence after its discovery, and that events were attributed to the real Mystikos that They Themselves did not order suggested it was not dead. Tenebris was, of course, removed from Commission duty due to disrespectful conduct toward Commissioners, and since they were involved with the initial discovery of the False Mystikos it was not unlikely that when Carmen said “Tenebris … worship of … false Mystikos” that that would be the right connection. Tenebris's fleeing confirms this, Romov says, glancing a wide wide smile to Thess.

Seeing that smile, Carmen does remind Romov that Thess did try to kill her. Thess points out that her own death was inconsequential as she's still here, and so's Carmen, and Romov grins wider. He makes no point either way of the information, but simply notes controlling an unruly devotee will be a good exercise for any newly appointed Devout. Romov expresses his particular gratitude to Carmen for highlighting the threats posed, and additional gratitude to Thess for agreeing to join this endeavour peacefully enough.

The pair then head to Alexis Telemova to report on what happened, and report the issue with the pipes but Carmen enforces a neglect to inform about the reason for the issue. Telemova is reluctantly grateful for the review of the cause of the problem, but since the problem persists is no more grateful than that.

Leaving Thess to her own, Carmen retires to her own office in the Commission and invites some cult members for further experimentation with the eye. Surrounded by candles, they focus on a large, solid wall of rock shaped by one of the members of the Cult over many many years. They are more than willing to sacrifice it to the cause of Progress! Carmen uses her first shot of Black Ichor on the solid wall, using her Dark Potential power to start turning it into salt while using the second shot of Ichor in a guided mutation on the eye in her hand as she does it, teaching it to control the Dark Potential transformation.

Her power, however, is yet strong enough to transform the whole block. She manages about a person's worth, transforming to salt that spills out onto the ground, before the power of the first shot of Ichor fades. The eye, however, seems to have learned: there are tendrils not of darkness but of painful white crystals spreading out from her the eye. Salt crystals that don't appear to dissolve in the sweat of her palm. While the purpose of the experiment was to reproduce the effect of the crystal Ichor, she has still achieved something new and she finds that she can clasp something in her hand and turn that to Salt without the need to spend Ichor…

Tenebris eventually washes up at the edge of the city and makes his way to the Oxbow lake island where the False Mystikos is currently staked out. Making note of a number of large aquatic beings held on the land, Tenebris makes his way to talk to the False Mystikos and explain what happened. They explain that they know nothing of this other cult, and that they must be of the Pretender Above (the “Real” Mystikos). Tenebris loudly tirades about how dare Carmen and Romov destroy the Mystikos's work, and the Mystikos is enthralled by Tenebris's anger. The Mystikos explains that they can work out some intentions based on what Tenebris has explained: that this Cult is attempting to seize control of Ichor for its own gains, rather than USING it as a means and a tool. Disgraceful! It should be allowed to flow freely and then any it deigns to let use it by choice should get to use it instead. No, this Cult is counter to everything the Mystikos has been working toward, and must be eliminated!

The Mystikos urges Tenebris back into the city to find out more and stop them, expressing gratitude for the forewarning. Tenebris heads immediately to Alexis Telemova to provide a full report on what went down including Carmen and Romov's involvement, and their willingness to kill Imperial Agents for this. He provides the report from the Watchers and Telemova is gravely concerned. She remarks that the Cult may have more significantly more power than originally thought, and will start acting to curtail that. She is particularly grateful for this.

Tenebris then contacts Lyra the Blessed, cagily, to ask her to investigate which area of the city would be most affected if Black Ichor were to be pumped out of the Commission. She says she'll look into it. He then goes home to tinker with his Imperial Essence delivery system and manages to increase the delay on the device to around 40s rather than 10s.

Having bonded the lantern to himself, Tenebris is interested to note that it doesn't go out. Telemova will probably ask for that back if she remembers its existence, but that's up for Tenebris to decide. He also takes a look at a box Carta gave him from the Espositos' collection, but someone who knows what's going on there will have to answer that question!

Carta's ritual to teleport him to his first Touchstone, Alessia Doubt, fails. Instead, he teleports to his other Touchstone, his Envy of the Silent Regent, where ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.

Upon leaving, Carta makes his way to the Imperial Bureaucracy where he uses his wealthy stature to bribe his way through the waiting times to speak to someone suitably high up and makes contact with one Suprema Rebekah. Carta delivers his report on exactly what happened, a story corroborated by notes from the two Watchers - whom this Suprema acknowledges were sent into the situation as the result of her colleague's concern over the cult - and also trades his memories to ensure that the entire situation can be fully understood. The Suprema is extremely concerned by these reports, but remarks that it is better that the Imperial Bureaucracy now knows so it can act, rather than remaining in the dark on this issue. She asks that this information not be spread unnecessarily so as to not alarm the masses, but that it may be shared should it be pertinent to prevent an individual from falling to error. She expresses the Bureaucracy's particular gratitude for bringing them the report, and additional gratitude for the memories.

Carta then heads to report to their employer, Alexis Telemova, and reports as much as he feels able to about what happened, emphasising some sort of Cult under the Commission that plans to unleash some sort of Ichor-catastrophe by reversing the flow of the main ichor pipelines. Telemova is concerned, particularly with how this corroborates other information, and expresses gratitude for the information. Carta leaves and reflects on the nature of the creature they encountered, but determines nothing particularly planar about the experience - to any of the planes.

• 2 Favour
• 1 Death
• Curse of Blind Adoration: (Mind, Chronic) Whenever you experience love you also experience blindness that prevents you from seeing the object of your affection. This curse can be lifted at any point by reuniting (any) two lost lovers.

• 3 Favour
• Salt Eye: Once per encounter you may transform something you can fit in your hand into Salt with 30s concentration, e.g. a rock, a coin, a lock. This costs no Ichor.

• 3 Favour
• Delayed Imperial Essence Delivery system time increased to 40s
• 1 Undying Candle in a Jar
• Opened Carta's Puzzle Box - see someone else for details, I don't know what this is

• 4 Favour
• ???

• Things are tense at the Imperial Commission.
• A full Audit has been declared by the Imperial Bureaucracy.
• Nobody knows when or how this will be happening.
• The Mystikos reports to be “delighted for the Imperial Bureaucracy to confirm the continued prosperity of the Commission”
• Internally, Commissioners are still barred from entering the experimental wing and a war of whispers has begun: those with affiliation with the Commission will be aware that a cult has been uncovered but if not handled carefully it could cause devastation. Sides are being picked, rumours spread, but nothing has sprung into action, yet.