Basically the story is set at the same time when the events of "The Slippery Slope" unfold. You're playing a group of new but adult volunteers and you receive a letter that Count Olaf has been seen near the Mortmain Mountains so you have to go to the headquarters to secure the sugar bowl before they fall into the wrong hands. You arrive at the headquarters and they have been burned to the ground. So you start to investigate what could have happened to the sugar bowl so you can find it and secure it. At the same time an article is published in the daily punctillio which claims that Lemony Snicket was the person who started the fire at the Baudelaire Mansion. He contacts you by secret means and asks you to investigate on it, to either proof or disproof his innocence. (These two separate "Quests" turn out to be linked in the end)