Actually the party is undecided. Rarg wants to explore the rooms in the north on this floor, Wenkman wants to try the key at the 2nd vault and Duucxejial seems to like both options.
If we’re undecided, Duucxejial will suggest we clear the current floor to reduce the risk of extra encounters (since we won’t waste as much time running back and forth between locations).
You move to the northern door on this floor. First you listen carefully but you dont hear anything. And so you carefully open the door a bit and take a look into this room.
Theres a door in the east and one in the west. Beside that the room is empty, except for the 9 Golems that are standing near the walls. The Golems are not moving and don't seem to have noticed you, yet.
"These may be disabled, because dewarfen were too busy to alert the building about intruders. I vote to reprogramming one or more of them to work for us." Wenkman shrugged in suggestion manner.
You dont know if these golems are disabled or not. When they have nothing to do, golems dont move at all. The only thing you know right now is, that opening the door only a bit to take a look inside that room didnt trigger them. Maybe they are disabled, maybe not. Maybe they have already seen you, maybe not. Since youre no golem experts, you just cant say what their orders/programming is.
If you want to try a surprise attack you can prepare the party with spells. Or summon creatures that help you. But since your character technically is able to create an unlimited amount of treasure tokens/mana and so in theory could buff the party up to 1000/1000 or so, better dont try that. Something very unexpected might happen.
Tokens disappear at the end of combat.
A combat round is maybe 5-10 Seconds in realtime, but thats not really important, unless you plan to do something that goes infinite.
Considering the Auto-Repair-Protocoll, you havent seen or fought these golems before, so you cant say what they are capable of and what spells they might have. Could be that they have the auto repair protocoll, or maybe not. Maybe they can do something i havent created a card for, yet
The Golems are positioned everywhere near the walls but not at the doors.
Ambushing a foe that hasnt seen you works like this: Cast your buffs/summons, then combat starts with your turn. But if that proves to be too powerful, it will be changed to that combat starts with your turn and everything done pre-combat is gone. We will have to see/test how it works.
Duucxejial has something far less egregious in mind (pending the consent of the other party members), so long as the golems don't have some absurd protection protocol up their sleeves. Besides, it would take too much time in universe for him to setup even a fraction of that sort of nonsense, and it wouldn't cross his mind to do so anyway.
To make my ambush question more explicit, will the golems be able to act during the first round of combat if we ambush them?
Having obtained the party's assent, Duucxejial will attempt to exile one of the golems with Offer to the Ancients. If successful, he will exile two more, then let Rarg remove a fourth with Into Darkness to round out the surprise round. If unsuccessful…depends on what the golems do.
You carefully open the door only a bit again, aim with your magical powers at the golems and then cast your spells. The two unsuspecting golems are hit by "Offer to the Ancients" and crumble apart into pieces and the golem thats the victim of "Into Darkness" is being dragged by tentacles into a rift to another dimension and is gone, too.
3 Golems are exiled and its still the adventurers turn.
Since the golems take so little damage, there's nothing else to do during our turn. Duucxejial intends to exile another non-Silenced golem during the enemy turn while they're still summoning sick.
We'd like to repeat the 3x Offer to the Ancients + Into Darkness on the remaining 5 golems, putting Silence on the last golem during the enemy turn. Wenkman can also Silence up to two other golems if they try to activate their abilities before they get removed.
And so you keep destroying the Golems. As only one intact Golem is left, the eastern door in the room with the golems suddenly opens and out comes a Gnome that must have heard the noise of the breaking apart golems.
"Eh, whats going on ....?!? Oh no, nonono. My Golems! You, what, why, why did you ... Oh noes, thats bad, bad, really bad! They weren' even ... WHY?!?"
Duucxejial snorts. "Similar golems have been used to commit atrocities throughout this entire area, and have almost killed us on numerous occasions. Why, exactly, shouldn't we feel the desire to remove them preemptively when faced with a veritable horde?"
The dragonspeaker then considers the gnome for a moment. "That said, from what little we've seen of the dwarves' records, you don't appear to be aligned with them per se. Perhaps there is conversation to be had."
As you look closer now, you see that the Gnome is wearing a metall collar around his neck that has a metall chain attached to it which goes through the door into the room the Gnome came from. Taking a look into that room you see that the chain is attached to the wall. It is long enough that the Gnome can walk around here, but he certainly cant leave.
"No, i'm not aligned to them! More like enslaved!" - The Gnome protests. "I'm working for them, and now that you've destroyed most of the inactive Golems that were here for repair and maintenance and fine tuning, the dwarfes will probably kill my family! What are you doing here anyway? This is dwarf territory now. You arent supposed to be here."
"We are here to retrieve a number of items that were taken from us, as well as potentially fulfill an additional request. Should you wish to join those that oppose the dwarves and elves, I am not necessarily opposed to freeing you, provided the others agree."
"How stupid are you? If theres one thing that dwarfes are really good at, its stone and metall. You can't free me. The dwarfes forged that collar and chain onto me and the wall. Theres no lock or key. I've tried to open or break that thing. Even used the golems strength to try to destroy it. We Gnomes are the best engineers in the world, but these chains are dwarfen forged and strenghtened with dwarfen magic. In theory they could be destroyed but you would need several mages to tear apart the runic magic the dwarfes forged into it. And same is true for the stone here. Though this keep wasnt build by dwarfes, their clerics used ancient rites and rituals to strenghten the stone. It's hard like a mountain made of diamond by now. Well, maybe not diamond, but probably tungsten or mithril or ... ah well, im quite sure you dont understand anything of it.
Now if you want to do me a favour and keep me and my family alive, i think there is a solution. You have to beat me up and then i can tell the dwarfs that intruders were here and i tried to defend the golems, but the intruders then attacked me and when they thought i was dead they left. Maybe the dwarfs will believe that and wont harm other gnomes for vengeance or as a punishment then."
A. - Alright, we will do as you wish, but first tell us everything you know about this place.
B. - We will make sure that the dwarfs are presented an even more realistic scenario and kill you instead of beating you up. That way you cant tell the dwarfs anything about us! Prepare to die!
C. - We are no monsters and we will not beat up a victim of the dwarfes.
Duucxejial frowns. "I assure you I'm not so ill-informed as to be uncomprehending. That said, if the dwarves were truly so marvelous with stone and metal they surely wouldn't need you to create these golems for them when there are far simpler options, and it certainly can't hurt to try either way."
Duucxejial casts Offer to the Ancients on the chain and the area around where it's anchored to the wall.
"Besides, if we were to execute your plan, they're far more likely to kill you for your apparent ineptitude before moving on to everyone you knew and loved to vent their frustrations, no? After all, why spare a mere 'slave' when there are plenty more to replace you?"
"I will take a look at the chain and determine what kind magic is it. Some tricks may not work on it, perhaps it's waste of energy to destroy something that's specifically designed to counter your own power, Duucxejial. Once I figure what kind is it out, I might be able to wipe the magic off it." Wenkman said. "We will liberate you, short guy, then we will make dewarfen thought we murdered you after destroying these robots. That should buy us some time, as they are more likely to be too angry to investigate the room and prefer to chase us down. That way, you don't have to worry about your family for while." Wenkman smiled.
Your spells dont harm the chain or the stone and trying to analyze or determine what magic was used to craft it, only tells you, that at least some arcane and holy magic was used, then there is runic magic but its not cast its directly forged into the metall and a lot of other magic unknown to you was used as well. A great part of it is not cast onto the chain but seems to be woven into and around it. How this is even possible you have no idea.
Meanwhile the Gnome looks at your efforts with a sad smile on his face: "Told you. If it was easy i would already have freed myself. But them dwarfes knew exactly what they were doing. And its true, they are good with stone and metall. But golems you see, thats secret gnomish knowledge and it took us hundreds of years to understand how to create them. The dwarfs could smith the parts for a golem and put it together, but animating it and getting it to do what you want, thats the difficult part. Even if the dwarfes would start now to try to learn how creating a golem works, it would take them several hundreds of years to understand it enough. But they dont have the time, they need the golems now and thats why they enslaved us Gnomes and forced us to work for them in the caves here and in other places."
He sighes. "Since you cant free me, please leave me alone. Its only a matter of time until the dwarfes detect what you have done here. Do whatever you came to do here and then leave before the dwarfes get you too."
MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Comments
Duucxejial will pick up the second healing potion alongside the shield.
Where do we want to go? Clear the rest of the floor, or back downstairs to open another vault?
@smax765 is there anywhere where we can find a collection of Rarg's spells/abilities for reference?
To make my ambush question more explicit, will the golems be able to act during the first round of combat if we ambush them?
https://mtgcardsmith.com/account/sets/74140
(Edit: Added link to spell image.)
7/19+1 Mana
I think he can do so during their turn
The dragonspeaker then considers the gnome for a moment. "That said, from what little we've seen of the dwarves' records, you don't appear to be aligned with them per se. Perhaps there is conversation to be had."
Duucxejial casts Offer to the Ancients on the chain and the area around where it's anchored to the wall.
"Besides, if we were to execute your plan, they're far more likely to kill you for your apparent ineptitude before moving on to everyone you knew and loved to vent their frustrations, no? After all, why spare a mere 'slave' when there are plenty more to replace you?"