I recently finished the whole ‘Featuring in the Tales of the University’ storyline. A nice, solid whodunnit with a few pleasantly creepy twists… since I always liked the university, however, I kind of feel the need to discuss the storyline - and particularly, the ending of it. So… spoilers ahoy, I suppose!
Mostly, I’m just a bit… discontent at the binary nature of the final choice. Either you destroy your academic reputation and sacrifice your connection with Summerset to bring the guilty party to justice, or you frame an innocent woman, without provocation, just in the hopes that a few important people might approve.
Some other options might have been nice, is what I’m saying. Like blackmailing the Provost to gain additional influence and funding for your new department. Or (perhaps with some extra work) writing the whole thing off as an elaborate suicide, enabling you to bury the matter without the need to sacrifice a scapegoat. Frankly, the bit that bugged me the most - having chosen the ‘pragmatic’ option - was that the Provost seemed so… singularly ungrateful that I’d saved him from the consequences of his foolishness. I would’ve enjoyed squeezing him more… directly.
Incidentally - if you actually choose the idealistic option, does he even get punished? Something about the whole setup makes me doubt it.
No, he doesn’t - the Masters made it clear that they found him useful and inconvenient to replace. Just like how you could cash in your favours from the Masters to bail yourself out.
Of course he wouldn’t be that happy even if you spared him - given he wanted to leave it to the Constables to sweep it under the rug and you just, well, dig it all back up.
The choice here is primarily about letting an innocent person take the fall or not.
Going back to where I echoed the Idealistic option, the Provost loses his position, but nothing more happens to him. He’s not put through the legal system, but everyone knows what he did and why. So, there’s punishment of a sort.
Even in a Fallen Traitor Empress London, it is important to remember how very important reputation is. Being publicly dismissed from a highly influential posting, and all the details made public, is not the slap on the wrist it might be in modern society. That man is effectively going to be blacklisted, for the crime of being caught if nothing else. This could go all the way to the Master’s that found it inconvenient for his exposure in the first place. Now, because of his incompetence, they are inconvenienced to replace him. That annoyance is a brush they might paint quite wide with. So no, he does not quite get his full just desserts, but vagrancy charges could perhaps be in his future.
As mentioned by others, he is definitely punished. The Masters make it clear that, while they would find it inconvenient to replace him, inconvenient is not the same as impossible. If you reveal the truth, it becomes less inconvenient to replace him than it would be to keep him on.
That (knowingly, if you played the right storylet) inconveniencing the Masters has consequences for you as well is hardly surprising.
Note regarding the comment from The Midnight Road, the details of his dismissal are not made public, that would probably be too embarrassing for too many people. He’s probably even "permitted" to resign, but the consequences on his future career are just as dire as you describe.
Well, the details of what happens if you choose to expose him are sadly unsurprising… so yes, I still find myself wishing for at least a couple more options, perhaps requiring additional investigatory work to pull off:
A: Deliberately blackmailing him with your information (and the fact that the Masters won’t protect him) for an increased payday, but taking a hit to your reputation (and probably Connected: Constables) due to officially ‘failing’ to solve the murder.
B: Deciding that he’s unlikely to face proper justice, you instead conspire with Anarchistic elements to ensure that this… ‘tool of the Masters’ is properly disposed of. The Dean disappears, and you subsequently reveal him as the murderer, leaving most to theorize that he simply fled from justice. Since he wasn’t captured, your direct reward is lessened - but you gain increased Connected: Anarchists and Connected: Benthic (always nice to see academic rivals humiliated), and take only a moderate loss to Connected: Summerset, since the disappearance of the Provost allowed them to at least PARTIALLY save face… and his successor has an obvious reason to be grateful to you.
…but that’s just my thoughts. I know I’d go for the blackmail-option if it existed, since my character tends to be rather… profit-motivated. And I’m sure there’s plenty of unsavory elements around who’d be eager to take justice into their own hands. Shame it’s unlikely to happen - with all they’ve got on their plates, the devs aren’t likely to spend much time updating or expanding already-finished stories, eh?
No, you see, the victim, the pasty, the Provost and the Principal are all Benjamin Villein, rewarding you with notoriety and fame with this one-man show.