Explain the second chapter of the first DLC ("The unfortunate accident at the raja's court")

[Fab]

(spoilers)
I enjoyed this chapter but I found the story was very hard to TOTALLY understand. Why Albert made a deal with the prince? What was the crypted message on the newspaper? I finished the chapter but even with the summary I feel like some parts are missing. :(

[worstcase11]

It probably all began when the Lemurian Empire fell some hundreds(?) of years ago.
determined to keep their influence on the Island of Lanka the Lemurians made up the
'ceremony of rebirth' that had to be performed by a Lemurian saint.

The ritual itself is nothing more than a magical trick.

The heir apparant has to prove their worthiness first by solving some logic tests to prove their intelligence.

After that the heir has to put on a stiff wooden apron and drink a sedative/drug handed to him by the saint.

The heir lies down on a specific altar, brought by the saint. And then a guillotine blade swings down and 'kills' the heir so their soul can visit the heaven to be enlightened.

Afterwards the saint calls the soul back into the body, heals the wound and wakes the heir.

The trick works the following:

The apron is prepared with fake blood. Because it is stiff, no observer can see that the middle of the heir's body is lowered by a servant who is hiding inside the altar, so the blade just barely misses the body and only cuts the bag with the fake blood.

Whatever the heir experiences as 'enlightenment' are if at all dreams induced by the sleeping drug.

Anyway the future Rajah thinks he got enlightened thanks to the saint and everyone is impressed by the holy resurrection magic the Lemurians possess.
So the Lemurians can get great trade agreements and military assistance and the like from Lanka whenever they ask.

----

Now comes the seven seas trade company. They want all the good stuff that is produced on Lanka - pigments, spices, tea etc. they can sell for big coin at home.

Unfortunately all the stuff goes currently to Lemuria and the Lemurians got their great influence over the Rajah.

So the plan is to sabotage the ritual to make it look like the Lemurian saint lost their godly powers.

The Spider is the agent of the seven seas company in charge of the operation.

1. Find out how the ritual works by making the son of the saint fall in debt with the spider

2. Contact the two heirs and secretly offer both of them help (secret code in the newspaper).

3. Have Albert Cloudsley set up the preparations for the sabotage (Albert has no clue what he is doing, he is not the sharpest knife in the kitchen).

4. Have the loser of the heir-exam sabotage the ritual by killing the servant who is supposed to pull the life saving lever in the altar.

-> The dumber sibling becomes heir (= easier to rip off during trade negotiations), the heir is indebted and open to blackmail from the seven seas company, the current Rajah will loose all trust in the Lemurians and no longer listen to them.

[worstcase11]

Continuation:

The Spymaster

Putra is on high alert because of the ritual and all the visitors. He knows someone is smuggling secret messages inside the palace but isn't sure to whom (most likely because they go to both possible heirs).
He thinks the prince will be the better candiate and asks the Blademaster to flirt with the Lemurian servant girl, in the hopes that she will tell them about the exam questions. He wants to give them to the prince to make sure he will be choosen.

The Blademaster

Jajan successfully seduces the servant girl to give him some hints for the exam questions. But instead of reporting that to the spymaster, he hides a note with the hints in a place where the princess has easily access to it. The princess and the Blademaster seem to either be secret lovers or she had the same idea as Putra and seduced Jajan for getting her information.

The prince and the princess

With the help of the cheat notes, the princess aces the exam, while the prince totally screws up. However, the princess has no idea that the Prince also knows about the backup plan provided by the seven seas company and that by winning she sealed her death sentence.
In the break between exam and ritual, the prince retrieves the jar with the poisonous cricket from the mouth of the devil statue.
When entering the ritual room he drops the jar into the altar and the servant girl instinctively slaps the poisonous cricket that is suddenly crawling over her skin.
She dies instantly of the poison and can't pull the lever in the altar.

The ritual continues as normal - until the part where the saint is supposed to wake the princess from death...

The deal

The Rajah is furious that his heir died from the ritual and demands the death of the saint's heir in return.
To rescue his son the saint tells the Rajah of the secret location of an idol that can prolong
a person's life.

[worstcase11]

How to read the encrypted messages:


The code works like this: Use an object as the key, for example the picture of a yellow lion. Then check the text. Pick out all the words that have anything to do with the lion for example 'wilderness', 'yellow', 'beast', 'emperor' etc. and of them take the first letter.

The hidden message with the lion on the newspaper reads: 'you will be heir'

The instructions on the newspaper with the second message say, one should look at the present from the even seas company. Now what did they officially send?

Look into Albert Cloudsleys letters and you see he was supposed to be delivering an 'item of devil worship' -> which gets us to the devil statue with the wide open mouth and the seven seas seal on its belly.

Now that we know the key for the code is the devil statue, we check the newspaper for any words that can be associated with it like 'inferno', 'screaming' etc. and again take the first letters of any those words which give the sentence:

'if you fail look into my mouth'

Albert Cloudsley had instructions from the Spider to put the extra present into the open mouth of the devil statue, which was a poisonous cricket in a jar.

The jar itself had a message on it 'throw me in the eye (of the altar)' = if you fail the heir exam, throw the poison cricket into the eyehole in the ornaments of the ritual altar.

[Fab]

Massive thank you! This is an amazing story packed in a small level. I feel I had understood 75% of it. The writers are genius.