The Case of the Wrong Order

Description

When a courier delivers a rain-destroyed invitation meant for someone else entirely, the Rusty Tankards do what any self-respecting band of broke adventurers would do: show up anyway. The promise of a warm meal and a dry roof is worth any amount of mistaken identity.

Babbington Manor is grand, isolated, and hosting a “Grand Unveiling” that nobody seems willing to explain. The guests are aristocrats, scholars, and socialites — none of whom expected four mud-caked adventurers, a volatile gnome, and a judgmental goat. Before the first course is served, the host is dead, the doors are locked, the storm has cut off every road, and everyone at the table has a motive.

The Rusty Tankards are mistaken for elite investigators. Rather than correct this, Rolan leans in. What follows is a locked-room murder mystery played for laughs — and played for keeps — as the party stumbles through competing alibis, staged evidence, secret passages, and the growing suspicion that the killer isn’t just clever but is actively enjoying watching them fail.

The Case of the Wrong Order is Book 2 in the Commonly Known as the Rusty Tankard series — a fantasy whodunit that blends Agatha Christie’s puzzle-box plotting with the chaotic comedy of a D&D party that has never once followed the plan.

Topics Explored

• Locked-room mystery — a classic whodunit structure with a fantasy twist
• Mistaken identity comedy — what happens when you crash a party and get promoted to detective
• Social deception and class satire — aristocrats performing respectability while hiding secrets
• Red herrings and unreliable clues — every lead is a lie, and the truth is sideways
• Ensemble comedy — a party of misfits trying to solve a murder they’re wildly unqualified for
• Storm-locked isolation — the tension of being trapped with a killer and no way out
• Fantasy mystery crossover — combining the cozy mystery genre with sword-and-sorcery worldbuilding
• Found family under pressure — bickering adventurers who rise to the occasion (accidentally)

Perfect For Readers Who Love

Fantasy mysteries with laugh-out-loud dialogue. If you enjoy the ensemble energy of The House in the Cerulean Sea, the locked-room intrigue of Agatha Christie, the irreverent humor of Kings of the Wyld, and the chaotic-good energy of a tabletop RPG session gone sideways, this is your next read. Fans of cozy fantasy, comedic whodunits, and stories where the goat is the smartest one in the room will feel right at home.

Chapter 1 The Wrong Order

The rain was not merely falling; it was being aggressively applied to the landscape, like a layer of gray varnish that nobody had asked for. The kind of rain that wasn’t content to simply make you wet—it wanted you to understand that this was personal.

“It has majesty,” Rolan shouted over the sound of the wind, which sounded suspiciously like the world screaming into a pillow. He adjusted his cape, which was currently acting less like a symbol of heroism and more like a very wet, very heavy towel. Water streamed from the fabric in sheets, pooling in the mud around his boots. “It has dignity! It commands respect!”

“It sounds like a drinking competition for royalty,” Nyx said. She was walking in that particular way she had when annoyed, which involved sliding between raindrops rather than walking through them. How she managed it, no one knew. Rolan suspected magic. Fizzle suspected spite. “The Order of the Crowned Tankard. It implies we get drunk, but, you know. Expensively.”

“It implies victory!” Rolan countered, wiping a sodden lock of hair from his eyes. It immediately fell back, plastering itself to his forehead like a commitment to failure. “A tankard is a vessel of celebration! A crown is a symbol of authority! Put them together, and what do you have?”

“A king with a drinking problem,” Fizzle supplied helpfully. The gnome was currently riding inside Bash’s backpack, having declared the ground “too wet for efficient locomotion” approximately three minutes into the storm. Only her head was visible, topped with a hat that was smoking slightly despite the downpour. Every few seconds, a raindrop would hit the brim and sizzle.

“It is a metaphor,” Rolan insisted, his voice taking on that particular tone of wounded nobility he used when losing arguments. “For… fullness. For a cup that runneth over with justice.”

“My boots are runneth-ing over with mud,” Nyx muttered. “Can we please just go back to ‘The Rusty Tankards’? Or ‘Those Idiots’? I liked ‘Those Idiots’. It felt accurate. It managed expectations. Nobody hires ‘Those Idiots’ expecting competence, so when we don’t burn down their village, everyone’s pleasantly surprised.”

“Or ‘The Order of the Moist Boot’,” Fizzle suggested. “Or ‘The Slightly Damped Disasters’. It has a certain honesty that ‘Crowned Tankard’ lacks. It says, ‘We are here, we are wet, and we probably didn’t mean for that to happen’.”

“We only burned down one village,” Fizzle protested from the backpack, “and it was already mostly on fire when we got there. I merely unified the situation.”

“We are rebranding,” Rolan said firmly, attempting to wring out his cape while walking. This resulted in him accidentally slapping himself in the face with the heavy, sodden fabric. He staggered, blinking through the gray varnish of rain. “A minor… tactical correction! New book, new us. We need a name that says we are professional, capable, and not the people who accidentally burned down that lighthouse.”

“That was a structural failure,” Fizzle chirped. “The fire just… highlighted it. Very educational, really. For the survivors.”

“There were no survivors,” Nyx reminded her. “It was a lighthouse. It was unmanned.”

“The seagulls survived. Mostly.”

Bash, trudging through the muck like a green landslide, rumbled a low sound that might have been agreement or might have been indigestion. His massive form carved a path through the storm with the inevitability of continental drift. “A name is just a word,” he said thoughtfully. “A turnip by any other name would still be a root vegetable. But ‘Crowned Tankard’ does rhyme with ‘Drowned Standard’.”

“See?” Rolan pointed a gauntleted finger at the half-orc. The gesture would have been more impressive if his gauntlet hadn’t immediately filled with rainwater. “Bash sees the poetry in it!”

“He rhymed it with ‘drowned’,” Nyx pointed out. “Look around you, Rolan. The universe is agreeing with him.”

Bash nodded solemnly. “Squelch goes the leather,” he intoned, his voice carrying the weight of a man who had seen too much weather and not enough dry laundry. “My toes swim in sadness now. Nature hates us all.”

“That’s a haiku,” Fizzle noted. “A bit light on the middle syllable, but the despair is top-tier.”

Bash grunted. “The rain makes it difficult to count.”

They had been walking for three hours along a road that was theoretically a trade route but was currently identifying as a river. Perhaps “walking” was generous—“wading” was more accurate, and “existing in a state of perpetual dampness” was probably the most honest description. They were cold, they were wet, and they had exactly three copper pieces between them, mostly because Fizzle had melted the silver ones in an experiment to see if money could burn.

(The hundred gold from their last job had gone straight to replacing Rolan’s armor, which he had lost in a volcano. Long story. The new set was cheaper, shinier, and made sounds like an enthusiastic percussion section whenever he moved. It was, he insisted, an upgrade.)

(Result: Yes, and it smells expensive. Also, molten silver is difficult to spend at most reputable establishments.)

“The map says we should be near a crossroads,” Rolan announced, pulling out a sodden piece of parchment that immediately began to dissolve in his hands.

“The map said we should be near a lake two hours ago,” Nyx said. “We were in a wheat field.”

“The map is optimistic. It sees the world not as it is, but as it could be, given a significant amount of civil engineering and a geological miracle.”

“The map is fiction, Rolan. It belongs in the ‘Inspirational Prose’ section of a library, not in the hands of four people drowning on dry land.”

“I believe in the map’s vision.”

“The map does not believe in us, Rolan. Look—the ink is running. That symbol there used to be a town. Now it’s a blob. We are navigating by blob.”

“A very strategic blob,” Rolan countered. “It implies… depth.”

Suddenly, a shape emerged from the gray curtain of rain.

It was a horse, looking thoroughly miserable. The animal’s eyes held the specific despair of a creature that had been promised oats and instead received weather. Its mane was plastered to its neck, its tail drooped like a surrender flag, and it walked with the plodding resignation of something that had accepted its fate.

On top of the horse was a man looking even worse. He wore a courier’s uniform that had seen better days, possibly before it had been dragged through a hedge backwards, set on fire, and then used to mop up a tavern floor. He squinted at them, water dripping from his nose in a steady stream.

“Ho there!” Rolan bellowed, instantly striking a pose. He slipped slightly in the mud but recovered with a spin that he hoped looked intentional. His boot made a sound like a disappointed frog. “Traveler! You face the… uh… The Order of the Crowned Tankard!”

The courier blinked. He wiped his face. He pulled a sodden scroll from a waterproof leather tube—the only dry thing within visible distance. He squinted at the scroll, then at Rolan, then at the mud-caked armor, then at the daggers on the woman’s belt, then at the massive green figure with a small head poking out of his backpack.

“Crowned… Tankard?” the courier asked, his voice carrying the weariness of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything approximately three hours ago.

“Indeed!” Rolan beamed. “You have heard of us?”

“I was told to look for the Order of the Crowned…” The courier tilted the scroll. A large smudge of ink obscured the last word, bleeding into the margin like a crime scene. “…something. Ledger? Legend? Larder? Lynx?” He looked at Rolan’s armor, which was currently serving as a rust nursery. He looked at Nyx’s daggers, which were somehow still gleaming despite the weather. He looked at the smoking gnome in the backpack.

“You look like an Order,” he admitted.

“We are the Order,” Rolan confirmed with the confidence of a man who had never let facts interfere with dignity.

“Right. Close enough.” The courier thrust the scroll at Rolan with the desperate energy of someone offloading a problem. “Delivery for you. Urgent. High priority. This was supposed to reach you three days ago. Damned storm shut down every courier station between here and the capital.” He wiped rain from his face with a sleeve that was already more water than fabric. “The host paid triple to get it through today because the event is tonight. So if you’re going—go now. Don’t tip me, just let me go, this horse hates me.” He paused. “More than usual, I mean. Horses and I have a complicated history. But this one has started making plans. I can see it in his eyes.”

Before Rolan could even reach for a coin he didn’t have, the courier kicked his horse and splashed away into the gloom, the sound of retreating hoofbeats mixing with what might have been maniacal laughter or just hysterical relief.

“Friendly service,” Fizzle observed. “I’d rate it four flames out of five.”

Rolan held the scroll like it was a holy relic. Water dripped from the edges, but the seal remained intact—a testament to the craftsmanship of whatever poor bastard had been assigned to weatherproof it. He broke the wax seal, which was gold and stamped with a crest that looked vaguely like a badger eating a monocle. Or possibly a monocle eating a badger. The heraldry was unclear.

“What is it?” Fizzle asked, climbing out of the backpack and nearly setting Bash’s hair on fire. A small blue flame danced on her fingertip as she tried to get a better look. “Is it a contract? Is it treasure? Is it finally, finally an apology from that wizard I set on fire?”

“It is… an invitation,” Rolan breathed, his voice hushed with wonder. “To Babbington Manor. For a ‘Grand Unveiling’ and dinner.”

“Dinner?” Bash perked up. His stomach rumbled, a sound like distant thunder—or possibly contributing to the actual thunder. It was hard to tell.

“Indoors?” Fizzle asked, her eyes wide with hope. The flame on her finger flared brighter.

“Suspicious?” Nyx added, because she had a reputation to maintain.

“It says,” Rolan read, holding the paper at an angle to catch the dying light, “‘To the esteemed members of The Order of the Crowned—’” he squinted, ”—‘[Smudge]. Your reputation for…’ hmm, that bit’s completely illegible. It looks like someone sneezed on it. ‘…precedes you. We require your unique talents. Your attendance is expected on the evening of the 14th.’” He looked up. “That’s tonight.”

“Three days late,” Nyx said. “The courier said the storm held it up. Whoever sent this wanted us there days ago.”

Rolan turned the paper over, as if expecting a joke to be hiding on the back. “‘Signed, Sir Babbington.’”

Nyx snatched the paper. Her eyes scanned it with the speed of someone who had spent years reading contracts for hidden clauses and buried knives. “He thinks we’re someone else. ‘Crowned Ledger’, probably. They’re that group from the capital who audit dragons for tax fraud.”

“Dragons don’t pay taxes,” Rolan said.

“That’s rather the point of the audits.”

“Or,” Rolan said, taking the paper back with wounded dignity, “our fame has finally spread! ‘Crowned Tankard’ is a name that travels!”

“Rolan, the ink is smudged. He invited the Crowned Something. We are the Crowned Mistake.”

“I prefer ‘Crowned Opportunity’,” Fizzle suggested.

“There is food,” Bash rumbled, the words carrying the weight of a man who had been eating trail rations for three days. “And a roof. And presumably walls. Walls that do not leak.”

Nyx looked at the rain, which showed no signs of relenting. She looked at the mud, which was developing ambitions toward swamphood. She looked at the invitation, which smelled faintly of expensive perfume and roasted duck. Her stomach, traitor that it was, made a sound that definitely wasn’t a growl.

“Fine,” she sighed, the word dragged from her like a confession. “But when they realize we aren’t tax auditors and kick us out, I’m stealing the silverware.”

“That,” Rolan said, brightening like a particularly optimistic sunrise, “is the spirit! Onward, friends! To destiny! And potentially duck!”

“To the duck!” Fizzle cheered, flames dancing between her fingers.

“To dry socks,” Bash added reverently.

Gerald the goat, who had been invisible until this moment, suddenly appeared on top of a nearby milestone. He bleated judgmentally—the sound of millennia of goat evolution distilled into a single note of disapproval—and then ate the courier’s wax seal. He chewed thoughtfully, considering the flavor profile.

“He’s judging us,” Fizzle observed.

“He is always judging us,” Bash confirmed. “It is his way.”

“Well,” Nyx muttered, pulling her cloak tighter against the rain, “at least someone in this group has standards.”

They set off toward the manor, leaving behind a puddle, a dissolving map, and the faint impression that somewhere, somehow, the universe was laughing at them.

Gerald bleated once more—a sound that, if one were inclined toward mysticism, might have been interpreted as a warning.

But nobody speaks goat.