Mandatory Incident Report 3192
Purpose
In the style of the secret communiques of the "archivists" who serve Count Arthur Drayton, the real message here is hidden in the guise of a mundane record, protected both by cipher and the mind-numbing tedium of sorting through bureaucracy. To any unfamiliar with the cipher, the document appears to be a report written by a deputy of the shire reeve recording an interaction with a group of yeomen who complained of an itinerant merchant effectively running a confidence scheme in his trading, primarily by providing very substandard copper rather than the pure ingots he had promised. The value of this poor copper is so small that even though the merchant only receives half of his payment up front, he's still coming out ahead. Further there are reports of delays and missing shipments, and of conduct unbefitting a yeoman towards some of the local peasants.
When the appropriate cipher is applied, it is revealed that the true message is one passed through Sir Gregor Robbins, a King's Hand, from the current Paladin of Saint Gwyn the Dauntless and addressed to Archbishop Oswin Grey himself. It serves to inform the Most Reverend that recently Dauntless, the artifact sword of Saint Gwyn himself, has resurfaced. However, it is the paladin's belief that it seeks a source of corruption further afield, and so will find a new wielder rather than being claimed by the paladin or the saint directly, since both remain focused on defending Bastion from attack, and the Lady of Bones has been mercifully quiet since the success of the last punitive expedition. Further, the paladin inquires about any righteous foreigners that may have come to the attention of the church, as he finds it most likely that one such will be chosen by the artifact to combat its favored enemy of undeath in that foreign land, always being most closely attuned to someone defending their home.
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