Your first thought is to scout out the situation with a little test. Right now, the actors have just given you general stage signals, to let you know they were in the profession without giving any details away. You haven’t talked to any of them. So you strike up a quick conversation with an older woman, passing along an idea. She makes a show of laughing and nodding, as though you’re talking regularly. Then you…
You’re now Bert, and you’ve been watching the stonemason’s for a while. Some older actors are here to help you out – you’re not sure how helpful they’ll be if there’s a fight, but at least you don’t have to keep your eyes on the door the whole time. You spotted it open briefly, then quickly shut again. Whoever’s inside must have noticed you, and probably doesn’t want to be seen. And since they know…
It’s a bent metal badge of some sort with a holy symbol of Reth on it. You’ve seen some Protectors wearing something similar. This raises a lot of questions and you’re going to have to be careful who you ask them to. The thing is, you’re not sure it came from a Protector. The ones you’ve met take Reth pretty seriously. It would be out of character for them to let a symbol of their…
“Looking for divine inspiration?” Len asks. “In a matter of speaking,” you reply. You show him the page. “Lots of numbers here. I think it’s the right place to look, but…” “But it’s like picking out the right six straws in a haystack,” Len concludes. “Well, if you’re finding too many numbers, maybe you’re supposed to be looking for something else. Like, there’s this part where Nual sends fierce winds to discourage the fighting, and…
It takes you a while because you keep remembering chants that enthusiastic Nual worshippers have been throwing around for at least a week. You’re fairly sure it’s not the one about the thirty-three voyagers, because that one just repeats the number thirty-three a lot and would make a terrible combination. You also remember something about forty sorrows and a thousand arrows. Or was it forty arrows and a thousand sorrows? Regardless, this sundial may be…
The first thought to cross your mind is that you found the Elements, but maybe you haven’t figured out the Temple part. “What exactly did you hear?” you ask Len. “I think we’re still missing something.” “What I heard was that Redlake keeps things he can’t prove legal ownership of in his ‘Temple of the Elements’,” Len replies. “I don’t know how many intermediaries that travelled through before getting to me, so maybe there’s some…
Probably the quickest way to wrap it up is to make it awkward to continue. It’s not like you can’t handle a little embarrassment. You’ve already stopped your performance, so you just need to get down your makeshift structure. And it’s easy enough to “accidentally” knock it over just before you reach the ground. You miscalculate a bit and stumble more than you meant to, landing on the ground rather painfully. “You okay there?” the…
You look at the sundial. It’s not in a position where you can really see into the window, but it’s just about high enough off the ground that it would work if you could move it. So you can at least use it to judge how tall you’d need a makeshift ladder to be. There are some loose barrels and crates. They’re on the small size, though. It takes about five or six to get…
Well, maybe you don’t need a detailed signal. The office is right here, you can just point to it. All that a signal can add is clarity as to why you might want to go in. There is a signal for “check your paperwork”, used when some issue comes up and you need to alert someone during a performance. It’s not a common problem, but it’s useful to teach the sign in case it does. Then…
When you were trying to figure out how to slip out of the office, you noticed Redlake’s calendar. Some of the days were marked with symbols – and while you didn’t look closely, you recall one looked like a flame and one looked like a waterdrop. Elemental symbols. So the calendar is probably a clue to how to enter the “Temple”, wherever it is. The dates are probably the keys to a number lock. Unfortunately,…