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.

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 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████