+3 for traps
The group leaves the tavern early in the morning, well into the night. They find a building nearby that has easy access to the roof via a ladder built into the side of the alley.
After climbing to the roof, you keep watch over the townhouse, but you see nothing of note on this night until it nears the break of dawn, when everyone but Elena notices Aldern leave the house with his longbow and he heads towards the northeastern exit of the city.
Elena whispers to the others when she sees their quarry leave the building. "Do we follow him, or do we try to follow up with the wife?"
"If that's really her, I wouldn't want her to feel threatened." Jim says, dropping a dab of herb into a vial. At some point he'd apparently set up his alchemy kit.
"I think we should follow him. You folks track him, I'll be right there." He begins packing up his kit and stowing it.
"Agreed." Zie follows Aldern.
"I can move quickly--I'll stay with Jim. Leave a trail we can follow."
Elena follows Zie, trying to be as covert as she can.
Stealth
Raj and Jim stay behind on the rooftop as Elena, Jace and Zie quickly head down to the ground level of the building.
You exit onto the street and find it sparsely populated, but the light amount of traffic plus the narrow streets makes finding Aldern tricky, especially when you move slowly to hide your presence from the man.
You last saw him head north and he was walking with a purpose, so it is likely that you will need to head in that direction, however you aren't sure how far you need to go.
"Raj, can you follow on the rooftops?" Jim says, kit now put away. "I can try to follow, but I suspect you're a bit more nimble than I am."
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"I can try...I have some skill at acrobatics."
Survival
Elena tires her best to follow Aldern as well as she could.
He idly looks around as he walks, seemingly without care. The alley is a sparsely populated and only a few people seem to be in this roadway, which makes it easier for you to see Aldern and for him to see you if he happens to catch sight of you.
Ground Team B:
Zie tries to make sense of Elani is doing and where she might be going as he wades through the crowded streets.
Rajendra picks his way carefully along the roof.
"This looks simple enough."
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"Not often for a beauty like you." she comments with a wink as you peek your head back outside and find Aldern missing.
You look in the direction of Elena's gaze and see the man you are following turn down another alley towards the assumed gate.
Zie looks to his left as you both try to cross the street and sees a few pairs of giant hooves ready to descend on him, but he is quick and leaps or if the way, dragging Jace back with him.
As the opulent carriage passes, you seem to have lost your way as you can no longer see Elena or Aldern.
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Zie looks at Jace. "You ok? I am afraid we lost him. Want to split up and look around, or should we head back and find the others?"
DM
"I can try..." Zie looks around for any signs.
At least, that is what Jace thinks to himself when Zie gets down on the ground and sniffs. This is confirmed when the dwarf stands back up and shrugs.
All Zie seems to remember from his time in the wilderness, expertly tracking prey, is that his current prey moved towards the northeastern gate and perhaps they should just circumvent the tracking and move to the 'presumed' end.
Elena looks up and back across the street she turned off of tentatively and sees the silent Raj pointing in the direction of Aldern. Elena nods, already aware of where he is, or at least where he is headed.
Jim and Raj appear to be trapped on the far side of the street, staying on the rooftop without progressing, merely choosing to help Elena from their position, but this might be there last step in the pursuit unless they can find a way across the chasm of the street.
After resolutely pointing towards the alleyway that Aldern ducked down, Raj and Jim look to find some way to progress.
They see various stall roofs that could lessen an impact, but it is still jumping from a three story building. Additionally, they could try to utilize the ropes crisscrossing the street, hanging tapestries illustrate the upcoming summer's end festival.
Ahead of you, you see that it exits out into the northeastern square and the looming northeasten gate is visible, even from your position in the alleyway system.
Aldern doesn't appear to be in this alleyway any more, but the more heavily crowded square is already getting into full roil as the business men are starting to hawk their wares.
DM
"Let's see if we can cut them off at the gate."
Zie makes haste for the northeast gate.
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"Yah, sorry. I know, I move pretty fast for a dwarf."
Zie waits for Jace to be able to walk along side him.
Deciding that you should rejoin her as quickly as possible, you leap from the rooftops, grabbing a hanging tapestry on the side of the building, and run down the side of the wall, using your ability to fall slowly while using walls and your magical spell to get safely to the ground.
As you do so, someone in the crowd sees you and points you out, causing a bit of a commotion as everyone cheers at your acrobatic feat.
Jace and Zie rush up to Elena in the commotion and the trio sees Raj running down the walls, cheered on by the crowd as he deftly lands on the dirt floor of the ground near the building.
The four of you meet up, but Jim is curiously absent.
"We lost our target, but I think she was headed out this gate. How did you do?"
"I also lost him as he went toward the gate. Jim is continuing to watch the townhouse."
"Sorry, boys. Tracking's not my thing. I'm lucky I followed him as far as I did. The guy just vanished on me. I don't know where he got off to. We could go back and watch the home again, though. See if the lady of the house has left as well."
"Jim is the best of us at tracking. I will do what I can, though."
But Raj is baffled.
"So many comings and goings. I fear we have lost them."
The group at the square spends about thirty minutes searching for signs of Aldern, the male heir to the Foxglove family name, but their tracking skills are meager and tracking in a busy city is nearly impossible for the untrained.
Most of the guards, stall merchants and shoppers look oddly at the Travelling Circus, but the group pays it no mind.
As they are about to give up, a nearby merchant pipes up. "What, in Abadar's name, are you lot doing? And why is the dwarf sniffing the ground?"
Raj looks to Elena, who (he judges) is far better at speaking than he.
After ten minutes, the most you have seen is Aldern's neighbors' servants hang the laundry along lines that crisscross their side balcony. Furthermore, there don't appear to be any movements inside Aldern's residence as far as you can tell, though the windows being boarded up makes it hard to see anything.
The snub-nosed merchant looks at Rajendra oddly as he sets down a basket of bright orange carrots, unloading the leafy vegetables onto his wooden table, covered by a reddish, stained carpet. "Oi! Are you a mute... uh... one of them Tienese-ians? Come down from the mountain to see what real city life is like?" he asks. "Still doesn't explain the ground-sniffing dwarf, though." he muses aloud as Raj stays mute.
"Oh, we are just looking for a friend of ours. Fella named Aldern foxglove. He's a local and we aren't, so we were hoping to surprise him. I thought I saw him and we tried to catch up with him, but we country folk aren't used to the city and he's gone. The dwarf was trying to find his scent...you know, dwarves and their love of the dirt and rock. Well anyways, I don't suppose you've seen Aldern pass by today, have you?"
"Saw a tracker doin' it once, so thought I would give it a try. Certainly, it is not as useful as it looked."
Zie stands up and brushes himself off, hoping to retain a small shred of dignity.
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Jace laughs. "We must look like some sort of traveling circus to you."
Pointing to the direction that Aldern was last seen Jace begins to describe what he looks like as he reaches down and grabs Zie off of the ground by his collar as a crowd begins to form.
Quickly brushing the dwarf off he explains a bit further.
"You see we aren't spending much time in the city and were hoping to visit with Aldern while we are in town, but now I don't even know where the damned Inn is anymore."
Jace looks about as if he is lost. Jace leans back onto the skills that Nualia once taught him. One he now knows as the art of manipulation and lies.
It is for the greater good this time though. He tells himself.
Raj shakes his head at the man's question. "You are right--I am a stranger here, but I am from Vudra."
"You must spend a lot of time here, seeing people come and go. Perhaps you saw our friends?"
Ziebodug gives the best description he can of the couple.
"Also, those carrots look pretty decent. How much?"
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Raj waits to see if Zie is going to sniff at the carrots, too.
"Say, what can you tell me of the fellow that lives there? Why does he keep his windows boarded up?"
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