“You must face the gazebo alone.”
“Obviously a very drunk Ghost but I wouldn’t worry about it I think he’s headed back to town to mess up their gazibo. I hate to be the one always pointing these things out but there is a very usable passageway back there that we could always run down. I don’t know how many secret passages are designed with headlong fleeing in mind. Since we seem set on continuing let’s at least pretent to be safe and use one with an escape route. Heck we’re not even sure if these symbols are going to work especially if limp noodle over there isn’t wearing one.”
"Before we go messing around with secret doors and such, maybe we should make sure that all the non-secret areas are empty and secure. Unless you all want to take a chance being the meat in an adventurer sandwich as we no doubt will stumble upon some great evil under the lectern as some other great evil attacks us from the back.
“Good thing we’ll all have a patina to protect us.”
Melon says “Fuck it” and puts the symbol on his arm.
“Amen”
“rAmen”
“Alright, so we’re going to explore topside first then go into the depths, right?”
“I think so, let’s go already it seems like we have been here for days”
So you head back the way you originally came and take the other route. You find that it soon ends in a small chamber that seems to have been thoroughly turned over by thieving goblins or some such. There is, however, a writing-desk that is largely intact.
Anything interesting on the writing desk?, drawers?
“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
Well, Poe hasn’t written on this one. There is a drawer, which has been forced open and ransacked. However, you do find a piece of paper stuck to the inside of the drawer compartment. It is partly missing. The fragment that remains reads
"mmm, I predict “the Helper” is some kind of Golem or at least a magical artifact, Fire, Flash. Blast and Burn may be 4 traps or obstacles one has to defeat to get to it, obviously somewhere within the unexplored part of this place.
Question, what, if anything has all this to do with our urn?"
“Wait, what depths? I never saw any depths.”
“I hope the Helper is small and jewel-encrusted. That would really ‘help’ me out later. Also, how cool would it be if Fire, Flash, Blast, and Burn were the name of 4 fire-based minions of whatever evil is trapped down in those depths or whatever”
“No kidding, this was supposed to be a simple placement. Did we really sign on for secret passages and undead? Oh well, let’s head back and head on to our doom.”
“Well, what do you think is under that podium heights? I’m willing to bet that under is going to be depths. In fact do you want to cover my bet on Melon’s death if I’m right?”
“Naw, that’s ok. So, let’s head back to this podium thingy then. Who is strong enough to lift it?”
“Damn, be a meat shield, lift the heavy thing, don’t I get any fun jobs. Next time I want to hear ‘Hey, OD it’s your turn to fuck the hot girl first’.”
Once we get back to the main room I’m going to try and move he podium along the scratch marks.
“Didn’t the Fighting Ignorants standard contract say something about ‘extreme likelihood of secret passages and undead, goblins virtually guaranteed, beholders hopefully rare’ or something like that?”
From the shape of the scratch marks it looks as though rotating it might be the way to go.