The Tzar is dead, slain by an unknown assassin. In his final months the Tzar pushed away more and more of his inner circle: advisors, friends, allied bureaucrats, even many of his royal guard. Grieving the loss of his second and last child—taken by the Leshy, he would rave to any that would listen—he became conspiratorial and mad. The country is reeling, warring factions vying to protect their fiefdoms as the state apparatus unwind around them.

The Ministry of The Border is staunchly Tzarist, and they hold the outside world at bay. Within, turmoil reigns. The Ministry of National Enlightenment has banned publication of the news. Underground papers manage to spread some rumors, but many citizens remain blissfully unaware. Their ignorance will be short lived, however… The great walking cities of the Northern Wastes, the Mechanist Fleetworks, the Skyfire Forge Automata, they all begin to shut down. The rule of ages has always been so:

Place your faith in the Sovereign Lineage, and from it shall pour forth the might of the industrial cause.

The Ministry of Irregular Localities (one of the Secret Police’s many fronts) has a plan. Or at least, a mission… the makings of a mission… initial directional orders with a high degree of opportunity for demonstrable agency among promising staffers. Ionovich Viskiovada, Collegiate Assessor of Improbable Maps, believes that one or both of the Tzar’s heirs are in fact still alive; that they have been kidnapped, not killed. His theories have been dismissed as flights of fantasy but when his boss is killed by raiders traveling back to the capitol, he sees his chance to save the state.

Follow tenuous leads, sneak among the great cities of the world, track down the Twilight operatives (if theories are to be believed) responsible, and save your homeland before its machines enter an irreversible slumber.