Up the Chain

The Stormcall Lawful office looked like order being held together by force of habit. Half old brick and half arcane upgrades, it smelled of ink, burnt copper, and too many sleepless nights. Officers in cracked armor and pressed jackets moved through paperwork, warding, and procedure as if the building itself might fall apart if anyone stopped filing things. The party came with a simple task: deliver the letter from the Queefdom. Simple tasks are rarely simple in Lawful spaces. DC Lawman had declined to take it himself. He was not a mailman, as he made clear. So the group brought the sealed letter to the front desk, where the officer on duty accepted it with the direct honesty of someone who was not pretending to understand more than she did. It was her first day. The letter would go up the chain. That was all anyone could promise, and somehow it counted as success. From deeper inside the office, past reinforced walls and a glyph-net barrier, the party heard a familiar word muttered again and again. Reclaim. The Reclaimer was in custody, hunched behind bars and still repeating the purpose that had made him dangerous. The skull-faced companion was gone, but this part of the earlier fight had been contained. As the party left, the office gave them a small reward for completing the delivery: a Zone of Truth scroll, practical, unsettling, and exactly the sort of thing a Lawful office would hand over like civic equipment. The letter was out of their hands. The truth, for better or worse, was now something Jonah could carry.