The Hunt for the Blue Orchid Thief

It is the age of Commerce, Empire, Reason, and Enlightenment in Hirconia. New markets and transport technologies have intensified the struggle for market share among the great merchant houses. Merchant princes make and lose great fortunes as they speculate on ever changing consumer demands.
In Fascio, capital of Tyria, the former Polydorian colony on Hirconia's west coast, three factions divide the urban and rural elites. Struggling, intriguing, and quarreling for political and economic power, relations have declined to the point where the next step is renewed violence. Civil war is only a single spark away. Each of the great merchant and landed houses aims to gain competitive advantage over their rivals and is determined to protect the fruits of research and development. At the same time each is just as determined to steal competitors work and be first to market with the latest innovation.
One aspect of this struggle is displayed in Tyria's orchid industry. Huge growth in demand has made massive fortunes for the merchant princes, driving the orchid masters to devise new and spectacular varieties to create and feed the burgeoning fashion for exotic blooms.
Exploiting the economic free-for-all are the mystery thieves. Anonymous men and women capable of extraordinary feats of athleticism, infiltration, legerdemain, and general derring-do, they are the most valued market commodity. Yet the cognoscenti of Fascio's criminal underworld tell stories of a master thief who strikes from the shadows, which no guard can repel, no lock foil, and who traffics in the black arts to achieve the impossible. Every truly inexplicable theft is regarded as the master thief's work and no one knows who it is.

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