Towering next to the Grand Rotunda like a cathedral stands the Post Central #7, which receives, sorts, and distributes mail to all of Zdareen, the 55-district division to which Sayashto belongs. The massive post office stands 6 stories high, each floor brimming
with offices, service desks, archives, sorting rooms, and warehouses. The post office has hundreds of staff, including analysts, clerks, delivery people, sorters, and more of dozens of species. Nobody greets you as you enter the bustling edifice.
Melodie looks for someone who seems vaguely important and shows them the warrant. "Excuse me. We need to speak to your superior about an urgent matter linked to the mail."
The clerk studies the warrant before responding. "Of course. I can schedule an appointment for you to meet with a manager in about an hour or so, if you don't mind waiting."
"As soon as possible please." Melodie replies, smiling but staring straight into the clerk's eyes with her own mis-matched ones. "This is very important."
The clerk is true to his word. Almost presicely one hour later, another petitioner comes to the waiting room to meet with you. "My name is Licarios. I understand you have some postal inquiries?" he asks meekly.
"Yes." Melodie responds, standing to meet the petitioner. "We are investigating correspondance sent with this seal." She shows the letter from the councillor, although she's careful to conceal the address. "They are enchanted with dangerous magic and relate to a plot of kidnapping and anarchy. Your help is needed in preventing any more letters being sent across Axis!"
"Oh, dear. Those are serious allegations. I will help in any way I can. I can grant you access to our delivery records as well as arrange for you to interview my mail-sorting staff about any wax seals matching the description. Hopefully, we can root out any plots that might be afoot."
The records are stored in three rooms of floor to ceiling cabinets, and the sorting staff measures in the scores. This might take a while...
Melodie immediately begins to interview the staff about what they've seen and handled.
With a heavy sigh, Zhi begins searching through the delivery records.
The mailroom bores Sara to tears! She finds a quiet and discrete corner and invites Ohalia or Zileska (or both) to join her in it.
As Melodie interviews the postal workers, she uncovers that none of the mail sorters knowingly handled any letters bearing the yellow seal. However, more than a dozen mail carriers remember delivering such letters, which they found among the other missives in their prepacked bags. This would indicate that someone slipped these into the bags after sorting, or that pickpockets planted the letters during the mail carriers’ scheduled routes. The only person who regularly checks over the bags before delivery is the postmaster in the interest of quality control.
Zhi leads the rest of you in the tedious search of the delivery records. It's mind-numbing work, but eventually you are able to track down several curiosities. First, mail carriers have delivered numerous parcels and letters to Taldaris’s home over the past 50 years, and his home is still on record under his name as occupied. Second, letters with Taldaris’s home as a return address occasionally travel through this office, suggesting he’s been home as recently as two weeks ago. Third, the you can identify a spike in the office’s inefficiency from 40 years ago, as recorded by several auditors and managers. Licarios nods sympathetically, noting that it was a messy year with numerous accidental policy breaches for which the postmaster Reschotpal ultimately accepted responsibility. Mandatory training courses followed for senior staff, after which there haven’t been any further difficulties.
"Who is this Reschotpal?" Melodie asks, "And where can we find them? It sounds like they're the person we should be talking to about all of this."
"Reschtopal is the postmaster who runs this station," Licarios says. "I will escort you to her office."
When you arrive at the office, though, the postmaster isn't present, despite being scheduled to work at this time. A review of the postmaster’s directives reveals only one in the past 24 hours: she assigned an oversized delivery bag to be carried out by Eantrapidas, a young vortex dragon regularly employed for long-distance deliveries. Shipping employees can confirm the dragon’s departure carrying a seven-foot-long bag with which he set off on foot to the south.
"Oh, dear," Licarios says. "This all seems very suspicious. The postmaster's home is to the south. I think you ought to track down Eantrapidas and check on Reschtopal. I do hope nothing unsavory has occurred..."
"Let's go then!" Melodie declares, keen to be doing something more interesting than interviewing postal workers.
As they proceed she looks around. "So... what do we know about Vortex Dragons, and what on earth has happened here? If its been forty years that's a very long term infiltration!"
"Umm ... they're dragons?" Zhi offers hesitantly. "I mean, I don't really know anything about them. But they're called 'Vortex Dragons' so I ... I guess they're a dragon?"
The rogue shrugs.
"And what was in the seven-foot-long bag? Was that Taldaris? We should be heading that way."
You make your way south from the post station, reaching the postmaster's house after an hour or so. The house is a single-story bungalow with wide doors, a broad porch, and a chimney belching a consistent plume of smoke. The curtains are drawn, and the strong wooden doors are locked.
Zhi quickly checks the door for traps and then pulls her tools and attempts to make short work of the lock before opening the door.
Melodie spreads a number of quick touches around as Zhi works on the lock.
Zhi makes quick work of the lock. Numerous cabinets, curtains, rugs, and tapestries make the interior of the house cheerful and homey. A large dragon, its horns, crests along its neck, and wings emitting a glow like starlight, hunches beside the open delivery bag, which is partly emptied of hundreds of documents. Several documents burn in the fireplace. The dragon looks up at you. "This isn't what it looks like..." it says lamely, then it growls and prepares to attack!
"It looks like you're destroying evidence. So I'd be tickled to hear your story about what this really is," Zhi says before beginning the gestures for her spell of speed.
She then taps her heels and spins her way to the creatures flank.
"Why don't you sit down and tell us what's actually going on?" Melodie asks soothingly. "There's no need for violence."
Melodie's spell has no effect on the dragon!
"Vortex dragon," murmurs Zileska. She rushes about, wildly touching everyone whom she can reach.
Sara stumbles forth, entranced by the vortex dragon, but flanking with Zhi she squints her eyes and tries to steady her vision
Safina fires off a volley of bolts, striking the dragon twice. Zileska wards everybody against fire as Sara and Zhi move to flank the creature.
The dragon opens its mouth and unleashes a cone of flames on everybody except Zhi! Zileska's spell prevents any of you from getting burned, but the interior of the house proves quite flammable, the furniture and tapestries catching ablaze!
Zhi almost freezes up when she sees everyone she loves bathed in flames.
She can take care of herself.
She steels herself and engages the reptilian foe.
Knowing enough about dragons to expect spells, Maria downed her newest extract.
As Maria drinks her extract, Zhi stabs the dragon repeatedly, leaving deep punctures in its body. With the final strike, the wyrm collapses!
Its head thrashes back and forth for a few moments before something horrid claws its way out of a hole in the back of its skull. Devoid of a head, or any features at all save for four short, clawed legs, this creature’s body looks like a large, glistening brain. The thing seems dazed by the sudden death of its host!
Intellect devourers can only steal the bodies of dead or helpless creatures. Protection from evil prevents them from doing so. They are resistant to weapons not made of adamantine. They are resistant to all energy save acid, and are immune to mind-affecting effects.
Zileska doesn't know what this thing is, but she knows she sure doesn't like it. With a brush she gives Sara a bit of luck.
"What in the nine hells is that?!" Zhi cries out before attempting to stab it into lifeless meat, looking for all the world like a housewife attempting to squash a cockroach.
With everything still all hazy, Sara can't really get a good look at the brain to realize what it is or what happened.
She delivers a frenzy of violent kicks with a scream, hoping she has it right.
After piercing it again and again, she realizes what it is, at which point she shrieks and doubles down.
Melodie steps in and, crushing her revulsion, stabs the brain-like thing!
"So, what was so important that this thing wanted destroyed?" Melodie asks, beginning to scan the documents.
Your furious assault makes short work of the brain creature, reducing it to a bloody pulp. It wears a ring of mind shielding. Zhi's shadowy magic extinguishes the fires before they can do too much damage. There isn't much of value in the house save for a scimitar of the planes hanging on a wall.
Aside from the documents, the bag contains the body of the postmaster. She bears a similar exit wound as the dragon, suggesting this parasite had been controlling her previously.
The documents represent decades of stolen missives, false identities, and written instructions. It's clear that this operation has spied on and steered local politics for a long time. Of particular note, you recover several letters instructing the postmaster to take any necessary steps to ensure the medusa Tsemani wins the upcoming election, including tampering with the ballot system.
"Since someone really wants this Tsemani to win, we should take every effort to thwart her success," Zhi says, giving Sara a meaningful glance.
~~~~~
Summarizing the clues the group gained from the visions and the lieutenant's recommendations regarding them, Zhi is ready to begin ticking them off her mental list.
"Let's find the cemetery first," she says, beginning with the last one first.
Outsiders don’t die of old age, at least not in the same way mortals do. Instead, an outsider that grows weary or loses focus eventually melds into its home plane, lending its quintessence to that realm. Sayashto’s famous mortuary industry provides these clients with a host of counseling services to help inspire the casually listless to find purpose and to help the truly languid set their affairs in order. Surrounded by an expansive cemetery, the immense cathedral known as the Hall of Final Deeds celebrates its many visitors’ accomplishments in the afterlife.
Deep within the hall lie meeting rooms and scores of isolated mediation chambers. Each meditation chamber contains a comfortable chair, a desk, and ample supplies for writing, drawing, and weaving, providing the occupant an opportunity to create a final testament before fading into the ground. These creations are displayed in several galleries in the building before being delivered to friends or sold to support the caretakers, as dictated by the creator’s final wishes. Each room also contains a bell for the occupant to ring gently once a day, letting attendants know which chambers are still occupied. For all its grim connotations, the Hall of Final Deeds has a warm reputation for providing meaning and structure to what could otherwise be a confusing and fearful process.
It is late in the evening when you reach your destination. The Hall and its surrounding graveryard lie north of Honorgrave Memorial Park, at the northern end of the district. A path leads up the gentle slope to the building, winding past hundreds of gravestones and freestanding mausoleums. Interspersed between the many tall, narrow windows in the grand entry hall are rectangular plaques commemorating the last 2,000 creatures that underwent dissolution here to honor their memories. Each new plaque replaces the oldest one, which is sent to the forges of the neighboring district Halgrimard to be forged into weapons for Axis’s armies.
A petitioner with deep green skin and copper-hued text written on their body kneels before the plaques, carrying a large basket filled with flowers, several dozen tiny cups, and a gourd full of yasht. Zhi recognizes them as Jolmulk, the current Councilor of Graves. The second is a winged sphere with a single eye--an arbiter inevitable, like the one you encountered beneath Oppara's senate building way back on the Grand Day of Exaltation. This creature flutters forward to greet you.
"Welcome to the Hall of Final Deeds. I am the chief custodian, Iphalt-C. How may I be of assistance?" the arbiter asks in a pleasing feminine voice.
"Just because someone wanted Tsemani to win doesn't necessarily mean that she was in on it." Melodie points out. "This is Axis - its almost against people's nature to cheat here. I think we should hold off on this for now, if the people rigging the election are the same people who took Taldaris then this could be a much bigger plot. We should know as much as we can before we act."
-------------------
At the Hall of Final Deeds Melodie seems quite impressed by the sheer size and scale of the place.
"Greetings Iphalt-C." She replies, shaking herself out of her reverie. "We are here to try and track down a missing inevitable - Taldaris. We received some rather fragmentary clues and one of them led us here. We were hoping you might be able to assist us."
She offers the writ to vouch for their claims.
Iphalt-C examines the writ before bobbing her body in agreement. "Very well. Normally, I am obligated to maintain client confidentiality, but your writ provides an exception. I remember Taldaris as a petitioner, for he visited occasionally to grapple with his soul’s relevance after death compared to his impact in life. With my help, he learned to detach himself from the past and accept his future in Axis. These lessons helped him translate the last of the puzzles inscribed on his body and become an inevitable, after which he rarely returned. His last visit that I remember was 116 years ago, at the time that Aroden died. That god's worship reshaped Taldor, and he wished to discuss the impact his absence might have on the empire's future.
"I understand Taldaris has been an active member of the community during his time here on Axis, even holding office several times. Councilor Jolumulk might be able to speak to that more."
"Another councilor?" Zhi questions with a raised eyebrow. She turns to Melodie. "Maybe this is all about politics." She chuckles a little. "Everyone's heard the joke about death and taxes. Looking around this place tells me they got it wrong. It's death and politics that are inevitable."
"There must be an extra pun in there to do with inevitables!" Melodie replies with a grin. "How's this. On Golarion death and taxes are inevitable. In Axis they're only two inevitables!"
"Thank you." She continues to Iphalt-C. "You've been very helpful. Could you tell us where to find Councilor Jolumulk and then we will leave you to your work?"
"There must be an extra pun in there to do with inevitables!" Melodie replies with a grin. "How's this. On Golarion death and taxes are inevitable. In Axis they're only two inevitables!"
Zhi looks long at her wife and a dark eyebrow raises. After a moment a smile breaks through and she leans in for a quick kiss on the woman's cheek. "You're adorable, but stick with singing."
With everything still blurry from looking at the dragon, Sara entirely misses Zhi's knowing look. As a result, Zhi misses out on receiving any rude looks back.
At the temple, Sara spritzes some perfume and marches up to Councilor Jolumulk and strikes up a casual conversation while the others engage with the inevitable.
"Pardon me, Councilor, I hope I am not interrupting." She extends her once-scarred hand to shake, helping pull the politician to their feet if need be. "I'm Ms. Burke, I'll be running for Councilor in the upcoming election. Are you here to pay your respects to anyone in particular?"
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Burke," Jolmulk says, shaking her hand. "You aim to be the next Councilor of Gates? It is good to meet a new arrival to Sayashto already so eager to contribute to our community.
"I am here to pay respects to all those who have given themselves to Axis--either falling on the field of battle or melding with the plane to donate their quintessence. I would be honored if you would join me."