Lawman at the Farmhouse Fringe

Stormcall began at the edge of a farmhouse. Mist clung to broken shingles and a rain-worn fence. The house smelled of mildew and crushed herbs. The party had managed a long rest, enough for the road and Point Pringle to stop being immediate wounds, but not enough to make the next problem polite. Two figures approached from outside. The older one wore his coat rumpled and his collar open, the posture of a man already tired of the case in front of him. The younger one kept writing in a thick notebook with nervous precision, turning the world into records as fast as it could happen. They were DC Lawman, Stormcall's local Lawful investigator, and his son Kyle. The party did not try to hide the obvious for long. They had the Reclaimer in custody, the one who kept muttering his own violent purpose like a broken prayer. His skull-faced companion had escaped in the earlier confusion, running too far and too fast for DC to waste the moment chasing him. DC had questions. So did Kyle, quietly and efficiently. They knew My Alchemical Romance by reputation and knew the group represented the Von Queefdom. They wanted to know why the party had come to Stormcall and whether their business would make the city worse. The answer was Tallulah Murn. The Tallyman. The party had accepted the bounty and come to investigate the anti-construct murders. DC produced a sketch of the scarred, short woman they were hunting, but the group had only just arrived. They had not seen her yet, and DC accepted that because Kyle's own dead-speaking work seemed to support it. The first meeting did not make the Lawful investigators friends. It made them local facts: uneasy allies with records, authority, and a murder scene waiting nearby.