Introduction

Your employer, the Peregrine Group, has dispatched you to the island nation of Odysia, formerly Sbabulba. Three factions wage an ongoing clanedestine war there - the Odysian Police, a military junta in immediate control; the Monarchists, loyal to the recently deposed Crown of Sbabulba; and the CIA who escalate tensions between the two parties to keep the region from achieving political stability, fearing that any dominant party would use the island's vast iridium mines to become a global superpower in the emerging hovo-bike market.

Though gutted of its official political power and mostly decimated during the coup by the Odysian Police, the Monarchy is allowed to remain in a symbolic capacity. At the behest of the CIA, the Odysian Police will allow Princess Jessica to take up the title of queen after her father's assassination. Your intel suggests that agents from each of the factions have orders to disrupt the coronation, and you have identified a few persons of interest, but you do not know who each of them works for.

On the night before the coronation the Crown dips into its dwindling financial reserves to throw a massive party at Castle Sbabulba. Festoons of killweed flowers, the symbol of the monarchy, hang from the ceiling while Odysian guards skulk the entrances and exits. It is in this stage you ply your trade - inconspicuously teasing out bits of information from unsuspecting people and cross referencing them with purloined intel. The C.I.A. and the Odysian Police both perform diligent surveilance operations on the goings on in Odysia, and maintain a perfunctory information sharing program between the two regarding what they find. These dossiers are so highly redacted as to be next to useless, and accordingly security around them is lax. The key to decrypting these messages lies with the agents themselves: as you talk with them at the party, they accidentally admit oblique connections to the events described in those documents. Hiding within otherwise benign phrases are layers of secret meanings waiting to be discovered by a master spy such as yourself.

Rules

Your goal is to uncover the identities of the three faction's agents among the four persons of interest. You will do this by drawing redacted intel cards that describe the previous actions of the persons of interest, untangling the interconnections between those bits of intel, and finally coming to conclusions about which person is an agent of which faction.

Core Mechanics

Intel cards describe snippets of information pertaining to the agents. They are partially redacted and sometimes make only oblique reference to the agents they describe. You will need to decide how they relate to the agents they are assigned to, as well as how the information on on the card relate to the intel on all the other cards.

Heat is a measure of how suspicious the characters are of your interest in them. Remember that you are an outsider attempting to penetrate a deeply dangerous web of intrigue. The agents will assume the worst of your motives, so you must be very careful not to attract too much attention to yourself. Certain actions in the game will raise or lower the heat level of various characters. You may not take any action that would increase a character's heat beyond the maximum of two.

Conclusion cards describe what you believe to be the underlying loyalties of the persons of interest. When you believe the intel you have gathered on a character implies they have loyalty to a particular faction, you will assign that faction's conclusion card to them. There are three agents you need to identify among the four persons of interest: a Monarchist, a Odysian Police agent, and a C.I.A. spy. The fourth person of interest will remain officially unallied, though they may have strong connections to one party or another. When you have assigned each of the conclusion cards to a person of interest, proceed to the Finale.

Actions

To play the game, repeatedly choose one of the following actions. You may choose any action as long as it does not raise a character's heat level above the maximum of two. Continue performing these actions, piecing together the threads of intrigue between the characters, until you have assigned all three of the conclusion cards to a character (by performing the "meet with your handler and draw conclusions" action). When you have assigned each of the conclusion cards to a person of interest, proceed to the Finale.

• Converse with one or more of the agents: Choose one or more characters. Add one heat counter to each of the characters you talk with, draw an intel card, read it, and assign it to one of them. The chosen character is materially related to the intel described on the card. They might be one of the redacted names on the card, or perhaps they instigated the events described, or any other suitably tangible relation. The identities of the other characters referenced or implied by that piece of intel can shift freely as more information becomes available.

• Drink a flute of champagne and reconsider your intel: Add one heat counter to yourself and move an intel card from one character to another.

• Go fishing for information: You corner one character and ask pointed questions about the doings of one of the factions. This action allows you to work backwards from a conclusion, discovering intel about a faction's agent before you determine their identity. Add two heat counters to that any character, choose one of the unassigned conclusions, and draw an intel card. The intel described on that card is materially related to the conclusion card's corresponding agent.
• Meet with your handler and draw conclusions: You excuse yourself to have a cigarette on the balcony and secretly make contact with your handler, updating them on what you've discovered. Remove all heat from all characters and assign a conclusion card to an agent who does not yet have one. The conclusion cards (below the agents) describe the underlying loyalties of the characters. As you gain intel and begin piecing together the histories of the different characters, keep these conclusions in mind and consider how the intel might suggest one of them applies to a character.

There are no wrong choices, but your actions might mean the difference between laying bare the life-long loyalties of known partisans, or hurling specious accusations at apparent triple agents amid a fog of red herrings. Which of these outcomes constitutes better play is left to taste.

To see a few rounds of gameplay in action, see this tutorial

On the day of the coronation the royal convoy begins its ceremonial journey to the rim of Mt Gakoosh, the active volcano that dominates at the heart of the island of Odysia. The white limosine containing the princess of Sbabulbia is flanked by Odysian police escorts and trailed by an entourage of courtiers, heads of state, and other VIPs. This procession is the moment that the agents have chosen to execute their deadly plans. Initially, the unassigned agent takes the lead position, nearest to the Princess' limousine. At each milestone of the procession, flip one of the conclusion cards you assigned to an agent: The card's reverse side will describe that agent's actions.

The motorcade departs from the Sbabulban castle at 0900, driving through downtown Odysia. Crowds gather along the streets with garlands of Killweed flowers to see off the princess, but the mood is subdued. Lines of Odysian policemen line the crowd to keep the peace, facing away from the procession. When the motorcade passes Patxi's Pizza, flip the first of the conclusion cards and observe what transpires.

Undeterred as chaos erupts from the crowd and Odysian police move in to deal with the fallout, the envoy continues on its path, venturing into the dense jungle that covers a majority of the island. Paved roads quickly give way to a tangle of haphazard dirt paths, splitting off and plunging into the tenebrous depths before rejoining the royal path. The second agent uses this confusing place to enact their conclusion.

The envoy emerges from the jungle and begins its ascent up the volcano. The road swerves to avoid open lava pits whose heat warps the air. Patience runs thin as the events of the day and the turbulent rocky road grate the travellers' nerves. In a last desperate attempt to settle their scores, the last agent enacts their conclusion.

Princess Jessica emerges from her limo onto the rim of the caldera. An aging butler, the last surviving member of her father's court, follows with an iridium crown on a velvet pillow. The photographer at the Odysian Times ashes his cigarette, glances out over the horizon at the island below, and loads the half-used roll of film he brought. Sergant Gastropol, seeing the opportunity to seize final power over the region and put an end to the C.I.A's meddling, draws his pistol and levels it at the Princess.

She leaps back into the limousine as the driver, prepared for this eventuality because of your intel, engages the turbo boosters and drives straight into the volcano. They narrowly escape waves of lava and hordes of Odysian police agents by darting into an obsidian-lined tunnel. From there, they were never seen again* . The Odysian Times runs a terse obituary and the Odysian president gives mealy mouthed condolences to the people of the island, while the few remaining Monarchists sharpen their knives and remind each other of the old days.

* (until the events of Full Speed Kiss)