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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 6228816" data-attributes="member: 12037">Nohnee hid nearby the ruins, watching carefully. Every once in a while goblins could be seen patrolling the walls and the interior of the ruins. Luckily for her, the city was a big place, and the goblins weren’t numerous enough to fill it out. Even on alert, she’d be able to sneak through. But to where? She watched carefully, taking in everything she could, and moving along the wall to peer in through the holes lining the ruined city’s exterior. It was overgrown and in rubble in many places. She didn’t remember how long it had been since the great city of Dalv had fallen, but she was aware it had been quite a long time. The structures had held up surprisingly well. She could see tall buildings on the inside, towers, roads that held back the encroachment of nature even after its people were long since gone. She wondered if this place was haunted, patrolled by warrior spirits of a time long since gone. Shuddering, she pushed the images from her mind. She had a job to do. In the distance she could see one of the towers on the inside, smoke rising from the top. Someone was there. Could be goblins, but it could also be the cultists, it stood to reason. Taking a chance, she signaled for the others to follow and slipped into the city proper through one of the small cracks in the wall. The group snuck slowly through what used to be back alleyways, dashing between former thoroughfares so as not to be seen. Eventually the group made it to the tower where two goblins were patrolling the grounds outside. Waiting and watching the two’s movements for some time, the group found and opening was able to sneak past them into the bottom floor of the tower. Catching their breath, the group looked around. The crumbling stonework was covered in a slippery moss, while vines snaked through cracks in the masonry, and beams of light cast through tiny openings in the walls. Old statues of posturing warriors stood watching the small group, untouched by the elements for the most part even after all these years due to the shelter afforded by the tower, even if the tower itself did not fare well. A well-worn stone staircase, its steps indented and smoothed by thousands of climbers, rose around the side of the tower into the floors above. They started moving upward, Nohnee in the front with Malrock bringing up the rear. Progress was slow. The ranger was convinced that the cultists laid traps in their wake. She didn’t think they knew that she was following them, but from descriptions of her employer they did not seem to be ones to take chances. As she climbed, she prodded each step first and kept an eye out for things like trip wires and loose stones and her ears open for any new sounds. After climbing several stories, and leaving just as many floors and landings below, Nohnee’s prodding turned up something, and she halted the group behind her quietly. They had made barely a noise, and so far things were looking up. She bent down to check a loose pile of wooden planks that lay in front of an open doorway between her and the continuation of the staircase in the next room. It was a hastily designed trap, probably created by the goblins, a rough thing that would have only caught the most foolhardy adventurers off guard. Someone had excavated a hole in the floor, directly in front of a doorway, to drop a victim into a closet or some other small cavity in the floor below. That small room had been filled with spikes jutting up from the floors, and most likely any former way out was barred shut. The entire pit had been covered in the loose wooden planks she had found, each cut through enough to lay across without issue but to break under any weight that was placed on them. If she had stepped on them, she would have been met with a nasty surprise. But, this was a roughshod job, almost an insult to her. Contemplating their next move, she heard movement in the room, and quiet voices. Goblins. She didn’t think they had heard her yet. They were probably set there to shoot or stab anyone who fell into the trap and didn’t die, and she doubted they expected anyone to make it this far without setting off some kind of alarm in the city. They would have to be dealt with, but they could be taken by surprise. She loosed her bow, motioned to the others to follow, and leapt across the pit with her bow at the ready.</blockquote>

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