Professor Cyril Lancaster, a chemist teaching in Sparkcraft Tower at Charterhall University. Developed a slow-acting poison that kills after a week without symptoms. Used it to blackmail powerful figures, including friends of Perrin Dask. The Glasskeys hired the [[Old Town Echoes]] to eliminate him quietly for 4 coin, with bonuses for his formulas, antidotes, and blackmail list. [[2026-01-24 - Edinburgh Session 2|Session 2]] - Has been missing from the university for several days and has missed classes. Both an Inspector and an Iruvian have been looking for him. His office and lab are on the 10th floor of Sparkwright Tower. Per his faculty file: lives alone in an apartment in a Charterhall brownstone, unmarried with no children, tenured bio-chemist with roughly 20 years at the university. His career has been competent but unremarkable, with only routine student complaints. [[2026-02-07 - Edinburgh Session 3|Session 3]] - His apartment in a Charterhall brownstone was found ransacked by at least two prior visitors before the [[Old Town Echoes]] arrived: [[Edrin Holt|Inspector Holt]], who had carefully combed the rooms and pocketed specific documents from the writing desk, and a party of five or six **Red Sashes** who tore the place apart haphazardly. Among the surviving evidence: a letter signed *"your loving sister"*—though university records confirm Lancaster has no family—requesting a meeting at [[Luminous Park]] on the 30th of November at 10 PM to discuss a "sick relative." In the kitchen refuse, two empty tins marked **Iruvian Treasures, Ltd.** contained residue of **Columnwort**, an alchemical reagent that produces noxious, eye-watering fumes when processed. Limestone dust of the variety unique to [[Six Towers]] construction was found on the cuff of one of his goat-hair blazers, suggesting his private laboratory lies somewhere in that district. [[2026-02-28 - Edinburgh Session 4|Session 4]] - Lancaster was found dead in his secret laboratory inside an abandoned carriage house in [[Six Towers]], having hanged himself sometime in the days prior. His ghost lingered at the site, muttering incomprehensibly at a wall covered in encoded documents and the recurring symbol of five interlocking circles. When addressed by [[Freakshow]], the spirit stated that he had used his poison as a tool of coercion against powerful figures—to make them comply with an unnamed cause—and that those responsible for some greater darkness had learned what he knew. He took his own life rather than wait to be caught by the constabulary or the Red Sashes. His ghost was subsequently bottled by [[Crow]] and [[Boo]], though the capture damaged his ethereal coherence. His body was dissolved with electroplasm. [[2026-04-11 - Edinburgh Session 7|Session 7]] - His private laboratory, occupying the abandoned [[Lancaster's Carriage House|carriage house]] in [[Six Towers]], contained an extensive and well-maintained chemistry apparatus, residual alchemical ingredients (including Columnwort), encoded research notes, and a wall-spanning conspiracy board connecting documents, symbols, and persons of interest with lines drawn in his own hand. All materials were removed by the [[Old Town Echoes]]. [[2026-04-11 - Edinburgh Session 7|Session 7]]