May 16th

Morning brings with it a small parcel with a note on it saying, "This is an older map, but it was the best we could do on short notice. Security's been beefed lately."

Inside is a wrapped scroll.

"An older map!?" Rory starts fuming inside his room at the hotel.

"I'm not paying 800 for this. He'll be thankful for the 200 I gave him up front. I'd ask for my things back, but neither the value of the goods nor the man himself deserve my attention, especially since he doesn't have the courage to show his face."

Upon opening the parcel in his room, after a nice bath and continental breakfast,  Rory gets the gang together to show them the map and form a plan, privately in one of their rooms.

"All well and good, if you hadn't dropped that we're with the Exchange. Now whatever you do reflects on Zeiss and Kolson."

"Good, it will reflect good business sense and professional conduct," he snaps. "Zeiss is Zeiss, but neither he nor Kolson would keep to the originally agreed-upon amount for this token effort. If they had come asking for the rest, it would have been be highway robbery and we wouldn't have let them walk all over us."

"I say we stop namedropping the Exchange and... well, important stuff too. Whenever we fail or not, now there's a chance that the Exchange will be held responsible for something they are not. Yeah, in resume, it's not just your fists that you should be careful about... well, actually not just you but you were the one that said the things last so... yeah."

Javan finishes getting ready to leave, "Anyways, I'm off to take care of fake Gaerlan. It's inexpensive considering it might give us some extra time until they discover we took the real one, in case we get lucky and end this nightmare of a mission quietly."

And with that, he goes meet the discreet weaver and work with him to make the fake Gaerlan a reality.

"Trust me, Javan. I know what I'm doing." Pretty sure...

Now Higaide and Rory leave to go watch the south entrance to the mansion and the gate. Guess we don't really need a third guy on the sewer level. I've been down there already, there's almost nobody.

Casing mansion:

Javan returns to the Weaver's shop to find it empty at the moment, despite the fact that he had an appointment and had paid a few silvers in advance to ensure the Weaver's time all day. The inside of the shop has lamps on and displays open but the door is locked.


Rory and Higaide rather quickly find out that the mansion is pretty well defended. Further, after a bit of observation they both come to the same conclusion; these aren't local guards. You're not sure what they are, but they're too organized and too disciplined to be merely guards. They aren't wearing any obvious identifiers of course.

After about an hour a small group of about 10 guards comes out of the front entrance, says a few words to the patrols, and then heads off towards the commercial district.

Javan is not surprised by the shop being closed like it is, as he had went through a few scenarios on how things could go wrong and had already decided a few actions beforehand.

As such, he defaults to a 'creating a fake trail' plan, making sure he's seen going towards what would seem to be direction of the outskirts of the town by as many people possible, until he finds a safe place to change clothes, then change directions by 90 degrees and walk for a good while, find another safe place to change, and so on. Oh, and he'll give priority to routes that would give him an advantage if he's truly being followed, or at least negates the disadvantage of numbers in case he's ambushed. At least that's what he's going to attempt.

Javan does make a quiet prayer to the winds before springing into action, hoping he's overthinking things as usual.

Javan, to his fortune, is heading on his second direction in his second outfit when he almost steps into the path of a group of 10 heavily armed guards. Javan manages to catch a glance at their uniforms, noticing they are all well pressed and maintained but have noticeable absences where there should be some type of identifying insignia or allegiance marker. They are heading directly towards the Weaver's shop. They do not notice Javan.

Even after all the trouble Javan went through to avoid people, on the back of his mind the idea of the weaver babbling about getting an easy weaving job on a bar appears all of the sudden and the possibility of being responsible of the guy's demise starts to weight on him.

The dragoon decides to follow the guards, he's going to do so using parallel streets and just check his targets from time to time, since if they are really going after the weaver they are going for his shop so he's not worried about losing them. He's going to check the race and other features like armament and their walking cycle that could give their allegiance or training away.

It takes Javan very little time to see that the soldiers are, in fact, heading to the Weaver's shop. They stop about a block away and, with a few hand signals, distribute through the area. After a couple minutes it becomes clear to Javan they are looking for him, with a few scouts and a few lying in wait. The odds of Javan being spotted have just increased dramatically.

Javan wonders why it took him to long to notice them distributing around the area, but decide it was better to do something about it first. And while his face doesn't shown, his mind is going through a quite few expletives over and over right now.

He's going to do his best to leave the area, considering he should have a rough idea on where they should be. Just to be sure and after confirming he in indeed on his traveler's outfit, he's going to quickly buy a large basket full of fruit (or something close enough) that gives him an excuse to hide his features behind of, all while he attempts to bail out of the place.

OOC: I hope you still have those 'dice' ready to go Javan, because I need a 'roll'!

Javan has several very close calls, but by the skin of his teeth manages to escape the 'net' and get out of the area. Based on how they were acting as he was leaving, he's also pretty sure that they're aware that he's not there, and will be reacting accordingly very soon.

The dragoon will beeline to Rory and Higs' location told him before he left and hopefully explain what's going on before he's found.

Thankfully things go well and Javan has no further issues getting linked back up with Rory and Higaide.

Rory turns in the direction Javan came from. "I've got no tolerance for this, not from these Order scabs. We'll crush 'em and then take their stuff. You get the scouts on the roof with your dragoon power."

He takes a half-step in that direction before he feels eyes on him. Do the guards notice him? Can they even see them, from where they are now? They might notice the fairy at his side. The two-bit tough squad probably informed them to keep their eyes open for someone of Javan's description.

"No, no that's the wrong move. We have an entrance down below us. This is our chance, they're down 10 men. It's time to make our play."

[Sewers it is, entering mansion's kitchen via muck it seems, godspeed gentlemen.]

"Huh. Yeah, that's actually a good point. Alright, let's hope this is the right move, I'm in."

Javan joins Rory on this idea.

Higaide follows suit.

The three of you quickly venture away. Higaide notices, after a fairly short period of time, that you appear to be being followed by some random passerby who he recognizes as someone who had been enjoying the paper near their casing spot.

Higaide scans for any nearby alleyways one might get lost in and ambushed, and whispers to his team. - "Act normal, but we've got a tail."

Javan slows down this pace unconsciously, coughs as he notices it then approach the other two and whispers back, "We can't do what we came to do if we are being tailed. Either we lose them and risks alerting the people inside the mansion if they are allied, we take them out and hope touching them won't send their limbs flying off the sky..."

"Or we discover which one is the one being tailed and they act as bait, leading the pursuer around town for no good reason... the target is probably me right? Foul winds...", Javan clicks his tongue shortly after finishing whispering, visibly annoyed at the current situation.

Where are they now? Is there anyone within range able to see them from the mansion? He ponders this as the others talk about how to handle their tail with misdirection. If we let him leave conscious, he'll report our whereabouts much sooner. If we attack him right now, we risk being seen or heard by patrol, or reported by passersby.

Whisper, whisper...
"We could let him tail us for a bit, but we're not letting him get away. If he's after Javan, we can corner him after Javan leads him down an alley without us, then drag him down a manhole. But Javan has been seen with us now. If he's watching all of us, he won't take the bait... In that case, we'll just go home and count the blocks between here and the mansion."

[If we are in agreement, sound off]