Party

Anika walked around a little, but couldn't easily get the auspex back out where people could see, and didn't notice anything odd in the accessible parts of the estate, which made sense. If there were hidden xenos somewhere about the place, they'd be in the cordoned off parts of the house, not the ones full of guests.

Investigations

Chasing down leads amongst the nobility, Anika got a lot of answers that were perhaps at odds with what she'd expect. None of the parties had been disasters - many had been fairly standard, with nothing special about them, but nothing especially bad, either. Nobody she talked to could remember any consistently terrible interactions, though there was of course the usual set of petty grievances and sniping back and forth, there hadn't been any big scenes. The one place there had been, was at an event thrown by one of the people who lived in the Lucid Palace, and was thus still alive.

She did find an extremely likely future target, though. One of the habitual party animals, who was still alive, had a house within the confines of the geographic predictions Anika had already made. Ma. Ord. Edmund Hamsha (ret.), formerly of the 134th Scintillan Fusilliers, had yet to be targeted. He had hosted hundreds of events, generally inviting just about everyone who was anyone, but with a special regard for other former military comrades. Many of his guests were also retired guardsmen.

Ravia

Ravia was able to identify the weapon, based on the reports and the description of injuries. Or weapons, rather. There were at least two. The majority of the injuries did come from a sword, likely a double-edged dueling blade similar to the one Etula carried, but by no means unique to her. The peculiar post-mortem head wounds came from a hollow-tine. Normally this was an agricultural implement, useful for caring for large grounds, but it seemed to have been repurposed here for some reason. An ice pick would have been much simpler to acquire and use, and the improvised nature of the object was at odds with the bespoke nature of the rest of the Stalker's gear.

Etula

The timing on the images turned out to be useful. Etula told Anika that on at least one of those instances, her own location could be confirmed by half a dozen others who weren't directly employed by her or her uncle. It might not entirely get rid of the rumours - Anika was correct in thinking that was unlikely - but it did give Governor Hax considerable ammunition to use as denial of his niece's involvement, and in terms of the investigation, it meant she was no longer a suspect.

Spoiler: Anika Only
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From her friends at the Kasballica, Anika got back a list of twenty reliable tech-adepts that could be counted on for discretion and quality. Scintilla had plenty of people capable of doing the work that had been required, as was to be expected for a city of its size, but the Kasballica knew who was the best. The list came annotated with recommendations for the top five. Lady Charuv was a noble scion herself, who had engaged with the Kasballica before, and picked up a wide array of technical knowledge through personal study. X-864 was a renegade of the Adeptus Mechanicus, stripped of everything except a designation, who hid amongst the industrial refuse of the lower hive. Delphium Thule aspired to be a techpriest, but had never been formally inducted - he took the famous Magos Thule's name as a form of self-aggrandisement, but by all accounts was quite skilled nonetheless. There was a note on his file saying he'd been hard to contact recently, so maybe try the others first. The Auditor was a mysterious one, who nobody had ever actually seen, as they preferred to work through intermediaries. They had come from Gunpoint a few years ago, and had connections to the underworld there, but beyond those scant details little was known. The final name on the top-five list was Harmon Gex, an extremely secretive techpriest who was, officially, still a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He had control over some minor processing station deep in the hive, and was known to have accepted the odd side job. The Kasballica thought it was because he chafed at his own lowly position within the Adeptus.


Macharius

Williams was an obediant servant, and began preparations immediately. He was also a man of the dynasty, however, and warned Macharius that it might take some time to put a proper event together, and with recent heavy spending the dynasty's liquid assets were not so great that they could afford to leave the flagship in orbit around Scintilla, not making any money, indefinitely.