The Thorncroft Game
The pages are only half the story. Somewhere in Blackharbor, a case is sitting open, and Dr. Thorncroft needs a sharper eye than her own. Step into the study, spread out the case file, and see whether you have the nerve for it.
The Thorncroft Game is a browser-based deduction puzzle arranged as a case board: the investigators sit across the top row, and beneath them are six columns you will use to solve the mystery. This is not a game of naming suspects; it’s about helping each investigator confront the evil loose in Blackharbor.
No download required — it runs in your browser, launching in its own window. Best played on a desktop or laptop; the case board isn’t built for a phone screen.
Investigators
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.Each investigator confronts the darkness in a different way. Your job is to cross-reference clues between the six columns and place the right lead before the right investigator so they can act.
