Nescience

The chanting turned to screams without warning. The small party exchanged panicked glances, unknowing and uncertain. The man himself shrugged in a quietly resigned manner.

"I know nothing, gentlemen, but you should not be surprised that your regime change did not stay peaceful."

They hustled on, down into the lobby, and were greeted by the last vestiges of a slaughter. Two of the labour automata - huge steam-driven clockwork mechanisms - swung their spindly limbs into the crowd with indiscriminately lethal strength.

Two of the workers escorting the Governor ran outside and were instantly mown down by repurposed, automata-scale sawmill tooling. The rest were disposed of a few seconds later by masked men swathed in Imperial cloaks. One of them saluted the Governor, pulling the visor of his helmet up.

"Apologies for the delay, sir. We ran into some opposition after opening the extraordinary circumstances orders, but we managed to reprogram the automata as requested. We'd best be going."