Report by : Inspector Tomas Reed
Name: Edric Hallowen
Age: 47
Occupation: Operations Manager, Blackwake Foundry
Residence: On-site quarters, Blackwake Foundry Head Office
Status: Deceased
Case Reference: BW–FIR–001
Edric Hallowen served as Operations Manager of the Blackwake Foundry for eleven years. Appointed for his efficiency and compliance, he was responsible for production targets, safety sign-offs, and coordination between Foundry Ward output and Gearcross logistics. Official evaluations describe him as competent, exacting, and loyal to industrial necessity.
Publicly, Hallowen was viewed as another faceless manager—resented by workers, tolerated by superiors, unremarkable to the city at large.
Hallowen rose through administrative ranks rather than engineering. His strengths lay in scheduling, pressure allocation, and compliance enforcement. He was not an innovator, nor an ideologue. He believed in order, procedure, and predictability.
For most of his tenure, this made him valuable.
Six months prior to his death, Hallowen was reassigned partial oversight of pressure-routing data following a series of “coincidental” mechanical failures. This role exposed him to systems beyond the Foundry’s official scope—timing correlations, patrol desynchronizations, and production dips aligned too cleanly with labor agitation.
This assignment marked the beginning of his deviation.
Witness accounts and personal records indicate a shift in demeanor during the final month of his life:
Increased after-hours presence
Private audits conducted without security oversight
Requests for clarification regarding “forecast windows”
Expressions of concern over “acceptable losses”
Hallowen began documenting anomalies not as accidents, but as decisions.
Notably, he did not go public.
He followed procedure.
Hallowen was unmarried, with no surviving immediate family in Brassveil. He maintained minimal social connections, preferring routine. He ate alone, worked late, and avoided political engagement.
This isolation made him efficient—and vulnerable.
There is no evidence of criminal association, labor sympathies, or ideological extremism. His actions appear motivated not by rebellion, but by an inability to reconcile policy with consequence.
On the night of his death, Hallowen remained in his quarters after normal administrative hours. Evidence suggests he was reviewing pressure-event schedules tied to Foundry Ward labor density.
He had prepared a halt request.
The request was never filed.
Instead, Hallowen was confronted privately. There are no signs of panic, flight, or resistance. This implies familiarity or authority. The method of death—controlled, quiet, and efficient—suggests intent to avoid disruption rather than express anger.
The scene was staged to resemble an industrial accident.
The city accepted this without question.
Personal ledger with increasing moral language replacing procedural terms
Half-burned audit notes referencing authorization beyond Foundry control
Desk clock manually stopped at 2:43 a.m.
No weapon present
No personal valuables disturbed
This was not robbery.
This was removal.
Edric Hallowen did not threaten the system by opposing it.
He threatened it by understanding it.
He was not meant to see the full mechanism—only his assigned cog. Once he recognized the pattern, his continued existence became a variable.
Variables are corrected.
Hallowen is an ideal first victim because:
He is complicit, but not malicious
Responsible, but not powerful
Replaceable, but momentarily inconvenient
His death signals to players that:
The city does not punish cruelty
It punishes deviation
Edric Hallowen will be remembered officially as a casualty of industrial danger.
Unofficially, he is the first proof that Brassveil does not require villains to kill—only systems that operate without pause.
Status: Case active
Victim classification: Necessary loss