Above the dirty faces of the crowd the flickering wisps of light from the gas-lamps wrestle with the pall of soot and ash that cloaks the streets of Undun.

"People of Undun! I ask you: is it not enough," intones a man theatrically from atop a stack of wooden crates, his face smeared grey with soot, "that the Council work us to death in their infernal factories or send us off to die in their wars of imperialist greed?"

There are angry murmurs of assent from the ragged assembly, a few of whom have also smeared their faces with soot in solidarity with the Black Fist. Most are human workers on strike from the gasworks or airshipyards, but you also observe a few columbids perched on the rooftops nearby and catch a glimpse of a blattle scurrying from a midden-heap. Not everyone is moved by the speech, however: you also spot of a ratkin pickpocket taking advantage of the opportunity to lift a distracted listener's purse.

"Now their Necromancers' Guild," spits the orator distastefully, "dares raise our beloved dead to serve them again as slaves to mine their black fuel of empire and fabricate their evil machines of war-"

"You're late, Mr. Coalsmoake," whispers a hoarse voice. You feel a pang of sorrow as you gaze into the eyes of this ashen-faced woman that shine dully, beautiful but dead to the world, from the depths of her cowl: she is an undead, a revivified corpse.

You scan the square, now packed full of strikers and curious gawpers. "Madam, we should go somewhere more private," you mutter. "The Council has ears everywhere."

A sudden commotion arises. "You are ordered to disperse by order of the Council!" barks a stentorian voice, followed by shrill screams as a phalanx of constables force their way into the panicking crowd of strikers, batons smacking wetly against flesh and bone. They are followed by a group of black-clad, masked figures: Inquisitors.

The undead woman clamps an icy hand around your wrist and drags you away with her. Caught up in the hurly-burly of panicked strikers, the two of you divert into an alley and weave through a twisted warren of warehouses and tenements.

You double over, catching your breath as the shouts and din continue in the distance. The ashen-faced woman is not winded, of course; she is not even breathing. One of the reasons why the undead are so useful as slave-laborers, you suppose.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me in such unusual circumstances, Mr. Coalsmoake," rasps the undead woman, gesturing a delicate, pale hand at the narrow alley in which you find yourselves. "I am - or I was, I suppose I ought to say, given my rather peculiar condition - Lady Jane Ashe, and I have need of your professional services as an investigator: specifically, to help me track down my missing daughter Arianna, who