Tour de Post

The two of you slump out of the sheriff's office. Due to your injuries you're not exactly fit for hard physical labor. Aayesha decides to give you a small tour of the even smaller town.

The most northern building at the end of what can very generously be called a street is Claire's house. This is where you have been spending most of the last two days **** and beaten. Behind the building is the unrelenting desert. To your knowledge nobody actually really knows what's in the center of it. Probably just more sand, but no one has actually been there and made it back alive.

Claire's house is one of the smaller ones on the street, but it's also one of the few properties who are still intact. Most of the residential building were burnt down in the bandit attack. Some of them looks salvageable, but most of them are completely unusable at this point.

"Where are all the other people?" you ask.

"They fled when the bandits came over yonder." she coolly replies while lighting a cigarette: "Took nearly every goddamned horse from the stables. We only got one bronco over there. Figures that it is Hacksaw that is left. That horse is un-fucking-breakable. Well, you might have a shot. When your stomach's not threatening to **** you that is."

You wonder how Aayesha rides a horse with her snake-tail.

"So who is left?" you ask.

"It's just you, me, Claire, Farah, and Emily. We have more people in our jail than in our town at this point." she sighs.

"Do you think they're out there getting back-up?" you ask.

"I fucking hope so. But then again, I doubt that any of them will return. They have no homes anymore, and it's not like business is great out here. We did what we could, but we might all be moving to the capital soon."

"Then why make me your deputy?"

"The Last Post has always been a flickering flame, trying to stay lit in an unforgiving world. I want to find the bastards that finally snuffed it out, and protect the ones that are still here."

You don't give her a reply. You just nod, and she moves on.

You take a look at the bar where you and that gargoyle woman Trisha fought with the kobolds and then each other. It's a small bar. It looks more like a dining room than a bar in some aspects. The finances can't be too great now that most of the local populace is gone.

"Do you know why the bandits wanted to kidnap the barmaid?" you ask Aayesha.

"Nah." she spits on the ground: "Farah has no idea, and the bandits ain't talking. I mean, they're talking, but not 'bout anything useful. I don't think the kobold lackeys actually know why they were doing it. They're just hired goons that don't ask no questions. The gargoyle seems to be more with it, but she ain't saying nottin'."

You move towards a general store, completely unattended. Like everything else in The Last Post, it is quite unremarkable. You assume that some people would find the miniature capacity of the store to be kinda quaint. You don't really care though.

"Well, good reliable Jason Foreman and his wife and kids used to run this shop, but he has fled the town. We'll ration out the remaining food among us, and I will compensate him if he gets back. Farah has already started to tally and divide the supplies among us. No reason for all of this food to go bad and for us to go hungry." Aayesha explains.

You move on. You're already halfway through the town at this point. A cramped shoddily fenced-in area is being used to house a small assortment of different vegetables. A large canister of rather unappetizing water is near it. A small house, almost more like a shack, is nearby. This building, if you can call it that, is surprisingly untouched by the attack.

"Growing crops out here is hard. We mostly just get beans 'n shit. Some lettuce, corn, peas, and sweet potatoes too. It takes a great heap of water though." she mumbles as her teeth beat the tobacco.

"Who keeps this running?" you ask.

"Ol' ma Juliette did. Claire really used to like her, so she has taken over caring for the plants the last two days." she casually explains.

"There isn't much room in that shack to live in. And it's also fairly unprotected for an old dame." you note.

"Yeah, I offered to extend and fortify her shack multiple times, but she refused. She has been a bit crazy that lady." Aayesha shrugs: "Maybe Emily would like it reinforced."

"Why would Emily care about an old woman's shack?" you raise an eyebrow.

"She sleeps there now." she replies.

Part of you doesn't like hearing that. You don't really know why. It's not like you really care about Emily. You don't care about Emily. You DON'T care about Emily.

You move forward towards the edge of town. A slightly charred, slightly old, slightly dilapidated barn-looking contraption is standing on the border of the small outpost looking over the road that leads out to the wilderness. Towards the southern horizon, a small ochre ridge rises, twists slightly, then falls in perfect parallel with the movement of the sun that prances over the azure and frustratingly cloudless skies.

"And this is the staples, where we have our horses... well, horse, I suppose." Aayesha finishes off her tour: "They were usually maintained by the Wilsons, and we used them to travel to Undercreek and back. Now there is only one practically useless horse. Emily is keeping it alive for now, but if we can't get that horse broken in we might as well slaughter it for its food, and hitch a ride the next time the tradesman comes here."

You've never been to Undercreek, but you know it's not that far from here. Just on the other side of that ridge in fact. It's the fourth largest city in the region, due to it housing the second-biggest lake. It is kinda close to the desert area, so there is not that many people who can bear living there, but from what you've heard business has been thriving recently.

"The town has seen better days." you conclude looking over the mess that is The Last Post.

"Too right, it has." Aayesha looks down, the shade of her hat covering her eyes from yours: "I fear the end of this little town is near."

After that ominous statement the both of you just stand there gazing towards the empty wasteland to the west, listening to the dunes move with the wind. The sun is beginning to inch toward the horizon. Aayesha drops the bud of the cigarette she was smoking and it extinguishes in the sand.