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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 1909432" data-attributes="member: 3448">Session 16 (cont'd):Ginara easily spots the man Melania described.  He doesn't appear to have spotted her, but he's moving quickly and seems to be trying to avoid being followed.  Ginara sneaks after him, careful to avoid being seen while trying to keep a clear view of the man.  Dove follows Ginara easily.  Lhovrik spots Dove beginning to move and calls in to the temple for Sister Aurora.  When she doesn't leave immediately, he calls in again.  Melania concludes that they're being a little more obvious than anything she wants to be part of and stays behind as they fall in behind Dove.Ginara follows the man as he makes a few quick turns and carefully hides as he looks over his shoulder.  She isn't sure whether he's seen her, but she's slowly following further behind him.Meanwhile, Vannser leaves the tavern and begins walking towards where Lhovrik and Aurora were waiting.  As he sees them approaching, he turns to join them.  Sister Aurora is rather surprised, since she thought the plan was for the rest of them to follow the contact while Vannser went his own way to avoid revealing any pursuit.  Still, they all begin walking along until they notice that when Vannser changed directions, a bystander also stopped walking along and then followed in the new direction.  Vannser realizes that the bystander was one of the other people in the tavern, the large bald man.  Much to Lhovrik's confusion, Sister Aurora and Vannser insist that they stop for lunch and pull him into a different tavern.  To nobody's surprise, the man follows them in.  They eat a quick lunch-- with someone following them, they clearly can't follow Dove and Ginara without giving up the whole plan.  Much to their chagrin, they can see that the man is writing on a piece of parchment.  After looking more carefully, they realize that he is sketching a picture of Lhovrik.  They finish their meal, and then disperse before heading back to the cath Kalissar house to continue their planning.Ginara continues to trail the man who spoke with Lhovrik, while Dove keeps a watchful eye on her.  After about a half-hour of travel, the man loses Ginara, leaving her at a major intersection.  She knows he turned, but isn't sure whether he headed left, towards the noble district, or right, towards the Merchant Quarter.  She makes a quick choice and heads right.  Her guess is rewarded when she sees the man she's been following taking a cross street deeper into the Merchant Quarter.  After that close call, she's easily able to follow him the rest of the way.  As he enters the Dock Quarter, the man begins to walk casually, apparently believing that he's lost any pursuit he may once have had.  Ginara increases the care she takes to remain hidden, and follows him to a tenement building.  She watches as he heads in the main door of the tenement.  After a few minutes of waiting with Dove, they conclude that he must be holed up somewhere within the building and return to report to their friends, arriving right as the rest of the group begins worrying about whether anything has happened to them. The group quickly discusses what to do next.  The discussion focuses on where the kidnappers might be hiding Desi in the building that Ginara and Dove found.  Lhovrik thinks about how scrying can be blocked and realizes that a basement area would be the easiest to proof against scrying, because a simple layer of lead in the ceiling of the basement would be sufficient, whereas an above-ground room would need to have lead along all the walls.  They begin planning ways to further investigate the basement of the building that the kidnapper returned to.  Dove and Ginara report that there were two basement apartments, each with its own entrance from the outside.  The group initially discusses searching them, but concludes that since the kidnapper went into the main entrance, it's likely that there's an internal connection to the basement.Melania sets off to gather more clues.  She heads into the tenement, notes the stairs leading down into the basement, and knocks on the door of the groundfloor apartment that belongs to the landlady.  A plump, friendly older woman greets her."I was wondering if you could rent me a flat.""Aye, I do have some rooms available.""I don't have a lot of money, so if you have anything really cheap, like a basement apartment, that would be perfect."The landlady thinks for a second.  "Both of the basement apartments are let right now.  I do have a small room on the fifth floor, at a reasonable price."Melania allows the landlady to show her the room.  "I'll have to think about it.  There are some other places I'm looking at." She makes a show of looking around.  "Do you have any storage space available?""Oh, yes.  You could rent one of the bins in the basement for a silver each month.""Can I see them?  Even if I lodge elsewhere, I may want to rent one."The landlady takes Melania down to the basement.  The stairs lead to an area of wooden stalls, some locked, others merely latched close.  All of the stall doors would allow enough sound out that Melania confidently concludes that Desi could not be trapped in any of them.  She also sees from the layout that in addition to the two basement apartments, the two first-floor apartments must each have a private access to the basement.  To keep a way into the building, Melania agrees to rent one of the storage areas and heads out to report.She describes what she's seen, and the group quickly hammers out a plan.  Desi must be in the basement of the other first floor apartment, so Ginara and Dove will enter the building under the cover of Lhovrik's invisibility spell.  Lhovrik, Aurora, and Vannser will wait outside, while Melania lurks among the storage bins, ostensibly moving her stuff in.  The plan is to give Dove and Ginara about 30 seconds to get the door open, at which point the rest of the group will charge in.  They figure that after they've captured the kidnappers, they can sort out any problems this may cause with the watch easily enough.Dove and Ginara slip in to the building quietly.  They rush to the door to the suspected apartment, and Ginara quickly picks the simple lock on the door.  Both Dove and Ginara can hear loud conversation within, so Ginara cracks the door open a little, trying to get a view of the miscreants within.  Instead, she sees a large family having dinner, until the father mutters at one of his kids for leaving the door open and walks over to close it.  Desperately sure they must have made an error, Dove and Ginara rush out and tell their anxiously waiting friends that they need to check another door, mere seconds before the rest of the group would have charged in and attacked.  They next try the landlady's apartment; she's doing some knitting in the bedroom, so Dove and Ginara are able to slip entirely inside.  They check the basement, the kitchen, and even the privy, but there's no sign of Desi or of any den of kidnappers.  They quietly exit, and once again prevent their friends from attacking innocents in a mad rush.  Much less sure of their plan, they approach the basement apartments more carefully.  Some investigations confirm that Desi is not in these, either.</blockquote>

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