Off, the table lies flat: easier on an old phone.
Applying re-tidies the table. Tidy any time from the pause menu.
Arabic turns the page right-to-left. Cards and stories change language at once; saved games carry on in either.
There are many ways to end. The journal's Roads show the three you are nearest, and what each still wants. Your Calling leans you toward its own. Lodging and dues come out at every bell. Do not run dry.
Cases arrive on the city's clock and count down. When one runs out it goes Unanswered, the culprit is Abroad, and the Crowd grows louder. You cannot answer everything.
You begin with Health and Wit. Put Health into Attend for a day's labour and a Coin. A notice on the desk opens Explore; the sergeant's questions open Question, answered with Wit. Then the first case: Explore its scene, Study raw proof so it counts, Question the witnesses with Wit, Rest two tokens to see if they agree, and confront the accused with a token of their case. The Court takes the accused and their tokens; the window says how it stands before you commit.
Attend is the Watch-house: Wit keeps the day-book for a Coin, Health walks the hard round for two, Petitions are bought there, and it deals with what lands on the desk.
Explore is the city: a case to search its scene, a case with its Quarter to go door to door, Instinct alone to walk the ward.
Take raw proof to Study to make it speak.
Question witnesses and the accused with Wit, Instinct or Health. Once an accused has been questioned, confront them: a token of their case in Question, Wit beside it. Heavy proof may break them into a free confession.
Rest a case with its tokens and see what they add up to, or rest.
A finished verb shows a card back on its token. Open it: what it found lies face down. Tap a card to turn it over where it lies; tap it again to read it; double-tap to take it, or Take all. Closing the window leaves everything where it is, story included. Taken cards join a stack of their kind if one is on the table, else they land in the collection pile, the yellow strip; drag the strip anywhere. New cases land there too.
A small box appears on a token only when the verb, part-way through its work, asks for one more card: a locked door wants Instinct or a watchman, a shut door wants Coin, failing light wants Wit. The box shows what kind; tap it to pull a fitting card from the table, or drop one on the token. Answering earns the fuller result. Ignoring it never takes Health, Wit, Instinct or Coin, but the work may come back with a Weariness or one find fewer; the box says which.
Tokens carry proof of six kinds: Body, Word, Motive, Presence, Writ, Coin.
The accused have their marks. Tokens sometimes betray the culprit's. A careful reader can name the culprit before the casebook does. From Bailiff, a scene may hold a second mark, put there to be found: lay the two marks side by side in Rest.
The Blood Court sits under the Carolina, the Emperor's law of 1532: two witnesses, a free confession, or full proof of the right kinds convict; anything less is indicia, grounds to hold and to question, not to hang. The sworn men are its jury; the Hole its cells.
An accused with tokens from their case in The Court is a charge. Four seals say how it stands: Enough proof, of Two kinds the case turns on, with Word behind it (a witness, a confession, a token that names them), and Nothing against them. All four lit is full proof. Under each token the Court says whether it names them, describes someone else, or is off the case. Indicia alone will not convict; on half proof the accused may walk, and they will not forget you. A conviction makes a Condemned card and lays the ladder beside it; the Condemned with a rung in The Court is a sentence.
Pardon, a Fine, the Pillory, Banishment, Branding, the Sword, the Rope, the Wheel. A plea or a free confession is a reason for mercy. Every rung has its price in Mercy, Cruelty and Dread. Say nothing and the Council sentences by custom.
Question the accused with Health and everybody confesses; only the guilty tell the truth. The Carolina allows it only on sufficient indicia, and the Court takes the confession only when Body or Writ agrees. Two witnesses who agree for different reasons are full proof; a beaten witness is not credible.
Work spends you: Health comes back Winded, Wit at Wits' End, Instinct Restless. Each recovers on its own in a little while, or at once in Rest. The city also teaches; see Growing. Some of the city's questions take a card to answer. A question that takes a card spends it, like a verb; one marked for good keeps it.
Health, Wit and Instinct grow by Insights, and the city hands you one when you have done a thing often or well. Walk the hard round (Health into Attend) three times and a fencing-master teaches Health; see off three needs before their clocks run out and hardship teaches Health. Convict someone on full proof, or let a case add up in Rest three times, and the method teaches Wit. Walk the ward (Instinct alone into Explore) three times and the street teaches Instinct; earn an informer's trust and the right ear teaches Instinct. An Insight into Rest on its own is a lesson: one more of that ability, for good. With the ability beside it, it is kept as a trick instead. Open Health, Wit or Instinct to see each way and how far along it is.
Each office opens new Insights, one for each ability, learned by that office's own work. Open Health, Wit or Instinct to see them.
Between cases the desk comes for you: Hunger, Sickness, Stress, each with a clock. Hunger with Coin in Rest is a dinner; Sickness wants Coin for a physician, or the Physician's Case; Stress wants an evening in Rest, quicker with Coin. Coin is never the only way: a watchman feeds you from the pot or takes the round, a Quarter feeds you on credit, an informer feeds you and remembers it, Health sweats a fever out, Instinct walks stress off. Let a clock run out and it takes what it came for: a Health, an Instinct, a Wit, for good if you had a spare, and if you did not it takes your strength and stays. The Bell's window lists what is on your back.
Weariness ×3 becomes Fever. Obsession ×3 becomes Fixation, and you misread proof. The Crowd, the Council's Suspicion, the underworld's Vendetta and the city's Dread of you are read at the top in words, not numbers: from Quiet to Boiling, Unwatched to Marked, Forgotten to Condemned, Easy to Terrified. Sleep it off in Rest. Answer cases. Keep your hands clean, or don't.
Now and then the city puts a question to you, often because of something you just did: a search, a reading, a questioning, a conviction, the round. The camera goes to it and the clock waits. Every answer says what it gives (a Coin, a witness, a token, a favour, a need lifted) and what it costs, and bends what comes after: the Crowd, the Council's eye, the underworld's grudge, the city's Dread of you, your purse. There is no right answer, only the one you can live with.
Some cases are commissions: the Council, the Bishop or the Guilds want a particular answer, and Favour follows. The Coquille has a court under the Warrens: break it, parley with its King (the Coquille with Wit in Explore), or stand its trial (with Instinct and Coin) and stay inside. The purse is always open, and every coin that changes the truth is counted.
From the middle of the game the Harbourmaster sends an examiner of his own. Every week they act against you: take one of your cases and close it first, spoil a token, pay a witness to forget. Find their weakness: question them with Wit, or shadow them in Explore with Instinct. Then catch them at it: question them with a token they spoiled, a witness they paid, or the case they took, and the Council sends them home. One thread a week, and a thread goes cold in three. Convict on a case they took before they close it, and they lose ground. Question them with Coin to buy a quiet fortnight, or with Health to frighten them.
An examiner sent home leaves a leaf from the Customs House. Two, laid in Rest, open the Harbourmaster's Books. Convict the Harbourmaster himself, and no examiner comes again.
The Market opens after your first conviction and the Petitions after your second. Spend Coin in Attend on instruments, Watch-house rooms and watchmen. Standing brings the Council's letters, and each office opens something inside the verbs: Sworn Examiner, a Writ (an accused with cause in Explore); Bailiff, the Watch and Disguise (Explore) and Deputise (Attend); Magistrate, Muster and Proclamation (Attend). The map at the top (on a phone, in the menu) opens your Watch-house: rooms that change how the verbs work.
Everything is a card. The verbs are the square tiles with a ring round them; move them like any card. Drag a card onto a verb, or tap the verb to open it at the side of the table: its first slot takes a card, and filling it reveals the others. Cards that fit glow, and tapping an empty slot lists every card on the table that fits it. When the verb says what it will do, press the button that names it. Clear hands the cards back. Some combinations fit the slots but lead nowhere, at least not yet.
Move any card or stack anywhere on the table; with Cards settle on the grid on (Settings, Table) they land on an invisible grid's cells; Show the grid draws it if you want to see it. The New cards tab marks the collection pile. Any two cards that read the same stack: drop one on the other; drag the top card off a stack to take one, or drag the stack by its number (or Shift-drag) to move all of it. Drag the table to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom, 0 to fit. The corner tools Stack like cards together and Tidy the whole table; Undo puts them back. The verb window stands at the side; tapping the table, a card or another verb puts it away. Coloured strings run from each case to its tokens, witnesses and accused, pinned to the cards; turn them off in Settings, Table.
S or Enter starts the open verb (on a finished one: turns its finds over, then takes them). C collects every finished verb. Esc closes it. Tab stacks, T tidies, Z undoes that, J opens the journal, + and − zoom.
Space pauses; 1, 2, 3 set the speed. You can still move cards and start verbs while paused. Settings can pause the game for you when a case arrives, a verb finishes, or while you drag. The ring around a card is its clock, and it stops while the card is inside a verb. Clues and witnesses warn you half a minute before they fade; tap the warning to find them. The Bell says when the next pay and lodging fall due. The Bell's box shows the dues it is about to draw: lodging, and a Coin for every two watchmen you keep.
Carolina: the Emperor's law of 1532, by which the Blood Court judges.
Indicia: suspicion, not proof: grounds to hold and to question, not to hang.
Blood Court: the city's court for crimes of blood and theft. The Court tile is its door.
Sworn men: the Court's jury. They take as long as they take.
The Hole: the cells under the Watch-house, where the accused and the Condemned wait.
Quarter: a part of the city. A case with its Quarter in Explore goes door to door.
Writ: proof on paper: a ledger, a letter, a hand matched. From Sworn Examiner, also the Council's leave to search an accused's house.
Abroad: a culprit who walked free or was never named. Still in the city, and the Crowd counts them.
Dues: lodging, and a Coin for every two watchmen, drawn at each Bell.
Standing: your name in the Council chamber. At each threshold, a new office.
Token: a card of proof from a case: what was found, read or said.
Aspect: a kind of proof a token carries (Body, Word, Motive, Presence, Writ, Coin) and how much of it.