Thorncroft Mysteries
The Investigation
Six investigators occupy six positions. Each is linked to a location, a rune, a tool, a piece of evidence, and a monster they faced. Your task is to determine, through cold logic, exactly who belongs where.
Every puzzle is solvable without guesswork. The clue cards on the right are sufficient — and just sufficient — to reach a single, certain solution.
The Evidence Board
The grid has six rows (Investigators, Locations, Runes, Tools, Evidence, Monsters) and six columns (positions 1–6, left to right). Each cell begins with six candidate icons. Eliminate the impossible until one truth remains.
A green border marks a solved cell. Cyan marks a cell highlighted by the selected clue.
Taking Action
- Left-click a candidate
- Lock it in as the answer — all others in that cell are eliminated.
- Right-click a candidate
- Eliminate that candidate from the cell. Right-click again to restore it.
- Click a solved cell
- Illuminates every clue card that references that icon.
- Right-click a clue card
- Move it to the Solved tab once you have used it.
Controls
- Deduce
- Highlights one valid elimination and the clue that justifies it.
- Withdraw (or Ctrl+Z)
- Undo your last action.
- New Case
- Abandon this investigation and open a fresh one.
Clue Cards: Column Relations
Vertical cards describe which position two icons share.
- Same column — A and B occupy the same position.
- Not same column — A and B are in different positions.
Clue Cards: Proximity
Horizontal cards describe positional distance along the row.
- Beside — B is directly adjacent to A (either side).
- Not beside — B is not directly adjacent to A.
Clue Cards: Direction & Distance
- ···
- Left of — A appears somewhere to the left of B (not necessarily adjacent).
- ↔
- Two apart — A and B are exactly two positions apart, with C in the middle.
- ↔
- Two apart, not C — A and B are two apart, but C is not in the middle position.
Tip: drag clue cards to reorder them within their panel.
Amelia
Dr. Amelia Thorncroft is six feet and one inch tall, copper-haired, and in possession of green eyes that glow when her psychic power is active — which Blackharbor's citizens have noted; they call her the Witch of Widdershins. She runs Thorncroft's Ingenious Solutions from No. 9 Widdershins Lane and has built a reputation for solving cases the Watch won't touch and the guilds pretend don't exist. Her psychic sensitivity reads the emotional residue of a place or object but gives her no ability to control what she finds, and the cost of pushing too hard is a migraine that puts her on the floor. She has never once waited to see if something was safe before walking into it, and her anger, when provoked, runs cold rather than hot. She has killed before, cleanly, when no other option remained. What she fears is not that she will have to again. It is the day it stops costing her something.
Evie
Evelyn Fairweather is a wild mage — her power is intrinsic and self-generated, with no external well to run dry and no ceiling that doesn't shift as she grows. She and Amelia met as children at Honorhold Orphanage; she enchants Amelia's equipment before Amelia can do something reckless with it. Her eyes are ice-blue until the magic comes through, at which point they go fully white. Her fear is not of losing control of the power. It is of losing herself to it — of becoming, by slow degrees, the kind of person who stops noticing the difference between people and obstacles. She publishes corrosive essays under the pen name Lord Greyweather. She brews three cups of tea every morning: one for herself, one for Amelia, and one for a man who is no longer living.
Corax
Corax is significantly larger than any natural raven — six-foot wingspan, feathers that absorb light rather than reflect it, obsidian eyes that glow when the psychic bond with Amelia is fully open. He was an accident: Evie's uncontrolled wild magic and Amelia's psychic force fused with a dying raven when all three were in the same place at the wrong moment, and he emerged as something new. He coordinates an intelligence network across Blackharbor called the Runners. He cannot lie to Amelia — the bond does not permit it — and has long since stopped trying. He calls her Millie with specific intent to irritate. His fear is not death, it's Amelia because he fears becoming just a bird again.
Clara
Clara Falk grew up in the Dregs — Blackharbor's lowest tier — and learned what she needed there: how to move without sound, read a room before entering it, and vanish when it mattered. She spent years as Mallory's shadow operative and turned on him when the time came — not because she was caught, but because she made a choice, which is the part she considers relevant. She lives now in the spare room at Thorncroft's Ingenious Solutions and is still half-convinced she doesn't deserve the comfort. She keeps a blade that always comes back to her hand, climbs rooftops when she cannot settle, and calls Amelia Red. She has always moved in ways that leave people uncertain whether they saw her or imagined it.
Vexley
Captain Dorian Vexley commands the Blackharbor Watch and has held that post through two administrations that would have preferred someone more flexible — the older guards call him the Last Iron Marshal, which they do not mean as a compliment. He served in the Iron Regiment of the Crown during the War of Splintered Sigils and carries the distrust of magic that comes from seeing what it costs at scale, not from ignorance. His cane sword is etched with anti-possession sigils he insists are decorative, and his coat pocket holds a silver locket with a child's portrait he has never once mentioned to anyone.
Althain
Rector Althain is Warden of the Sealed Archives at the Cathedral of the Tortured God and was, before that, a pack leader of the Hunters of the Hallow Faiths — men consecrated to pursue what ordinary Witch Hunters cannot manage. The order called him the Silent Fire, which was not a compliment. He retired with honour, accepted the Rector's position, and now decides what should be locked away and whether it is staying locked. His doubt is not in the divine. It is in himself — specifically, whether a man who has done what he has done can still be trusted to know the difference between righteous and merely expedient.
Cave
The Seawall Caves run beneath Blackharbor's lowest tier — sea-carved chambers that predate the city above them and have never been properly mapped. The Watch does not patrol down here. Investigators who enter report a pressure at the back of the skull, a sensation of being observed from below, as though the darkness has weight and the weight is paying attention.
House
A shuttered property in one of Blackharbor's middle tiers, neither prosperous enough to attract interest nor derelict enough to justify demolition. The neighbours say nothing happened there. The neighbours never do. Cases that begin here have a habit of turning out to involve someone who owned it before the current records begin.
Docks
The Dregs waterfront — Blackharbor's lowest quarter, where the city parks what it would rather not see. The docks operate at all hours, and the question of what is being loaded or unloaded in the pre-dawn dark is not one the Watch formally asks. Most cases come from somewhere like this. The water is very cold and very black, and the depth charts stop being reliable past the third marker.
Cell
A holding cell in one of the Watch's lower precincts — cold stone, a single lamp, and the understanding that anyone detained here is either very guilty or very unlucky, or has become inconvenient to someone important enough to have them put somewhere quiet. The walls are old enough that previous occupants have left marks. Some of the marks are in languages that predate the current calendar.
Ship
One of the vessels anchored in Blackharbor's fog-choked harbour, registered to a company whose address turns out to be a room above a chandler's shop with no occupant. Ships are self-contained worlds with their own rules, and what happens below decks tends to stay there — until the ship comes in and the thing that happened comes with it.
Store
Thorncroft's Ingenious Solutions, No. 9 Widdershins Lane — an occult curiosity and procurement service operating from a large three-storey shopfront on Blackharbor's most eccentric street. There is a workshop below and a vault below that, the latter lined with lead. The sign in the window reads Consultations by Appointment, which Amelia ignores in both directions.
ᛏ — Tiwaz
The rune of Tyr — justice, sacrifice, the cost of doing what is right. Practitioners inscribe Tiwaz on binding contracts and courtroom thresholds, where its ward is said to burn against false testimony. It does not prevent a lie from being spoken. It ensures the liar knows precisely what they are surrendering.
ᚨ — Ansuz
The rune of the divine voice — clarity, inspiration, the cutting-through of deception. Ansuz is carved into the lintels of confession chambers and etched onto the tools of those who read the residue of the dead. Its protection is perceptual: those warded by Ansuz are said to hear what is meant beneath what is said, and to see the shape of a lie before it fully forms.
ᛚ — Laguz
The rune of water — flow, the unconscious, the pull of what lies below. Laguz is used by psychics to manage the flood: when a reading threatens to overwhelm the practitioner, the rune functions as a channel rather than a wall, letting the current pass through without destroying what it moves through. Without it, the alternative is drowning in someone else's last moment.
ᛟ — Othala
The rune of inheritance and ancestral claim. Othala is scratched into doorframes and stitched into the lining of garments handed down through families who know what they carry. Its ward is against displacement — against the erasure of self, against possession, against the slow replacement of who you are with something that wears your face. The older practitioners say it has to mean something to work. You cannot ward identity with a symbol you don't believe you have.
ᚾ — Nauthiz
The rune of need — constraint, hardship, the moment when there is nothing left but necessity. Nauthiz is unusual among wards because it does not activate until the situation becomes genuinely desperate: inscribed on skin or stone, it lies dormant through ordinary danger and releases only when the practitioner has nothing else. Whether this makes it a ward of last resort or simply an expensive reminder that you have run out of options is a matter of ongoing theological debate.
ᛊ — Sowilo
The rune of the sun — victory, clarity, the burning-away of shadow. Sowilo is the natural counter to Glamour magic and to illusions that operate through light; it does not pierce deceptions planted in the mind, but those that manipulate what the eye receives cannot hold against it. Shadow Walkers do not like encountering it. Clara, who has reasons of her own to be interested in shadow magic, wears a small Sowilo inscription on the inside of her left wrist. She has not explained this to the team.
Magnifying Glass
The first tool of the trade — nothing supernatural about it, which is precisely the point. Amelia's psychic sensitivity can read the terror pressed into a room, but it cannot tell her which ink was used in a forged document, how long a body has been cold, or whether a lock was scratched from inside or out. The magnifying glass is for the questions the aura cannot answer.
Crystal
A wild mage's power is self-generated and has no external ceiling — which means precision is the problem, not supply. Evie does not need the crystal to function. She uses it to focus her output to an infinitely fine point when broad application would be catastrophic, or to hold excess energy that would otherwise bleed uninvited into everything nearby. It is not a source. It is a valve.
Talons
Corax's natural weapons — keratinous, needle-sharp, and maintained with a fastidiousness that is entirely his own business. He finds the suggestion that he requires tools other than himself faintly insulting. More than one man who thought the alley was empty has felt it before he saw it — the rush of something huge and fast and wrong, talons at velocity, and the specific understanding that nowhere was safe.
Knife
Clara's blade of choice — weighted for throwing, enchanted to return when called. She does not know who made the enchantment originally; it was already on the knife when it came to her, which tells you something about its history that she has chosen not to investigate. She has thrown it into the dark more times than she can count, and it has always come back. So far.
Revolver
Watch-issue, well-maintained, rarely drawn. Vexley prefers to resolve situations before firearms become the logical next step, and he is skilled enough at reading a room that this works more often than it should. He is, however, very good at shooting. He does not enjoy that he is very good at shooting. He is accurate at distances that make his constables uncomfortable and has never once explained how.
Cross
The symbol of the Church of the Tortured God — a faith that does not promise the suffering will end, only that it means something. In Althain's hands it functions as a focus for warding sigils inscribed during his seminary training, and as a reminder to the people he meets that his mercy is a professional courtesy, not a reflex. He blesses it weekly. He does not explain exactly what that entails.
Scroll
A tight roll of vellum, typically sealed with wax bearing no recognisable mark. What's written inside may be a ritual instruction, a last warning, a list of names, or a confession addressed to no one in particular. The handwriting is usually careful — the work of someone who knew they were setting something down for the last time and wanted to get it right.
Spellbook
A working grimoire, not a collector's piece — the margins annotated in multiple hands, the covers stained and cracked, at least one page burned out from the inside by something that didn't like being read. Someone was using this regularly, and recently. The question of where they are now is usually where the investigation begins.
Pentagram
There is always a body. Whether the pentagram came before or after the killing is a question investigators have never been able to resolve with certainty — and the answer, when it comes, is not always the same. The mark itself does not wash out. No chemical dissolves it, no abrasive removes it, and the building's subsequent owners have learned to live with it or not at all.
Cauldron
Cast iron, salt-encrusted, and cold when found — whatever was in it finished rendering long before anyone arrived. The residue at the bottom is consistent with three separate substances that should not be combined under any sanctioned application of arcane chemistry. The smell persists for days. The Watch report will describe it as materials consistent with unlicensed ritual preparation and decline to go further.
Potion
A sealed vial with no label and a colour that doesn't quite have a name in any of the standard reference texts. Whatever is inside represents a combination no certified practitioner has dared attempt. The bottle resists handling in a way that is difficult to describe precisely — it does not want to be moved, and everything in the room seems to agree. Those who have examined it concur on one point: Blackharbor should not be nearby when it is opened.
Skull
Found in a chained iron box buried beneath sacred ground — the old site, turned over when a construction crew broke earth for a new church. The skull appears human. Evie found no arcane trace in the bone, which should not be possible; every material that has ever been touched by a working carries residue. Amelia held it and felt nothing at all — no echo of a life, no impression of a death, none of the faint imprint that even century-old remains carry. It is as if it was never alive. Whatever it is, it was chained in iron and buried in holy ground by someone who wanted it to stay where it was.
Spectre
What remains when a violent death leaves an impression too strong to dissipate on its own — not a ghost in the folkloric sense, not a conscious entity, but an emotional residue playing on a loop in a location that absorbed the force of a final moment. Psychics can hear them clearly. Everyone else experiences it as a drop in temperature, an inexplicable reluctance to look at a particular corner, and the persistent sense that they have forgotten something important.
Entity
Something that does not belong in this world and is aware of the distinction. Extradimensional in origin, drawn through a weakness in the boundary between states of existence rather than any deliberate opening. It does not attack in a conventional sense — it consumes, slowly and selectively, leaving its passage marked in warped surfaces, fused matter, and the particular category of silence that means something has stopped existing where it used to be.
Cultist
A person who chose this. That is the part that stays with investigators long after the case is closed — not the paraphernalia, not the damage, not the rhetoric, but the fact that someone looked at what they were joining and said yes with full understanding of what yes meant. They are not possessed. They are not deceived. They are committed, which is in some ways the most frightening thing a person can be.
Golem
An arcane construct — stone, clay, or occasionally cast iron — animated by a bound sigil set inscribed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It does precisely what it was built to do and nothing more. The problem is rarely the golem. The problem is who built it, for what purpose, and whether the person who built it is still around to give it new instructions or deactivate it on request. Usually they are not.
Leviathan
Something large that lives in the deep water beneath Blackharbor's lowest tier. The harbour depth charts show an anomaly past the third marker that has no geological explanation and that the Port Authority has quietly stopped measuring. Three ships have gone down in the last decade with no weather to account for it — hulls opened from below, crew unrecovered. Survivors speak of a shape moving under the surface in the moments before impact, dark against dark, longer than three vessels end to end. The Watch logs these as accidents. The surviving seamen do not use that word.
Lycanthrope
A human being undergoing an involuntary and irreversible change — arcane in origin, variously attributed to curse, contamination, or in rare cases a dormant hereditary trait activated by contact with the right (or wrong) kind of energy. The transformation does not make them a monster by default. It does, however, make them extremely dangerous when frightened, and most of them spend a significant portion of their time frightened, for obvious reasons.
Help Amelia and her friends unravel the Mystery.
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