"Neylor?  Haven't seen any Neylor that I know of.  Are they tiny or invisible?  And why can't I wake these guys up?"

So this wasn't an FPS kill room after all.  Put-you-to-sleep room?  It is kinda boring looking.  But if the golem popped out for them, that's not very boring.  They should be awake!

  There goes Pyrus asking good questions again.  So he'll go with a boring follow up.  "How long have you been guarding this place?"

Helper answers Pyrus, "The Neylor are hidden. You cannot wake those people because I have put them into a magical sleep that will only lift once they are off world."

Helper turns to face Joe. "I have been guarding this place for 3,049 years."

Larry asks, "Why did you put these people to sleep?"

Helper says, "Because they said they were going to remove the heart of stone and take it off world. I am not permitted to allow that to happen."

So they'd be fine if they'd lied.  More evidence that honesty isn't the best policy.  Whoever said that must've meant something more specific, like, "If you lie to me, you're fired."  Darn those overly broad maxims!

"Woah.  Long time.  You're magical?  Awesome!  Can you tell if I'm magical too?  I think I might be.  I wunna learn how to cast magic spells like you do!  I'm made of rock like you are, so maybe I can."

There goes that tail-wagging again.

  Right, follow up question then, even if he doubts much will come of it.  "When is the last time you have even seen or heard from a Neylor?  And is the list of things we shouldn't down on this world ten items or less?"

The golem answers, "You are magical. The last time I have seen a Neylor was today. The rules on this world are not restricted to ten items or less."

Larry asks, "Is there a written form of the rules..?"

The golem answers, "Yes."

Larry asks, "Where is it?"

The golem gives directions to another room.

Larry asks, "...is it OK to ask about the Neylor you saw today?"

The golem answers, "Yes."

Larry asks, "Then where is the Neylor you saw today?"

The golem points at Angel. "There."

Pyrus grins at Joe's question.  He raises his eyebrows in surprise at the fact that the golem knows that he's magical.  And that there's still a Neylor around even 3,000 years later.

But hearing that Angel is the Neylor has takes him completely by surprise! ( https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi2...-trick-to-baboon.gif )

"You'd think for all the games I've played I'd have expected a surprise reveal like that, but I sure didn't!"

He looks to see if Angel is just as surprised as he is.

  Joe figures it is a coinflip for if his boss actually knew this ahead of time and wanted to act all mysteriously smart. Or, will merely claim to have known it the whole time when they put Angel on the team.

  Also, he won a bet that Pyrus was magical, but alas that guy fell into a volcano... We're not sure if it counts as irony or not that betting on the lava dragon involved a death by volcano.

  "So, not even the Neylor are allowed to remove the heart or change your orders, I assume?"

  He looks in the direction of the Room Full Of Rules, and expects he is the only one boring enough to want to slowly read them-ahah. Hah. Yeah right.  Joe is boring enough to scan ancient rules into a portable keyword search enabled format.

Angel seems just as shocked as anyone about being labeled a Neylor.

The golem answers, "Specific individuals have the authorization to remove the heart of stone. The half-blissian is not one of them."

"Um.  So...  What are the Neylor, then, if a half Blissian is all Neylor?  Is it like, some magical power you're born with?  A nationality?"

Pyrus updates his mission status for Dominus: Rescued advance team alive. Weird non-hostile magic native hindering 2nd objective. Currently questioning native.

  Alas, ancient racism is being upheld before current day convenience.

  "okay, I wasn't expecting to need you to specify the second most recent Neylor you've seen or revived orders from.  Yet here we are."

The golem answers Pyrus, "Neylor are a nation build upon the worship of the goddess Velocity. There have been other such nations, but this location was of the Neylor."

Larry looks at Joe. Then looks at the golem. "Why didn't you answer Joe?"

The golem answers, "Because he did not ask a question."

Murphy says, "Great, we're dealing with an overly literal magical construct. OK, so who and when was the second most recent Neylor you've seen?"

The golem answers, "Yesterday, I was visited by a Neylor by the name of Carlos."

Angel asks, "What was he here for?"

The golem answers, "I am not permitted to answer that question."

Pyrus listens to the exchange, lips skewed.  He can guess why Carlos was here.  Got a message that there were intruders who admitted they want to take the Heart of Stone.  Can't say what he was up to since that includes important things like, "He hid the Heart of Stone under the altar in the final boss chamber."

"Velocity?  Wasn't that a racing game?"

Pyrus shakes off that train of thoughts.  Best not to ask details on the goddess or you'll get a long exposition dump of historical info that won't even count towards an achievement if you take the time to listen to it all, much less have any relevance to your mission.  Probably.

"So um...  Angel here would like to know why you think she's a Neylor.  Erm.  Phrased as a question.  Why you think Angel is a Neylor?"

Mmm.  On second thought, skipable flavor text is more the modern game way of doing things.  There were quite a few oldschool games where important details were hidden in the long expo dumps.  And this guy was probably made with the oldschool mentality.  But such questions can wait for after the answer to this one.

  Ah yes, only worshippers of Velocity the Strong and Pretty would have such mastery of passive aggression bestowed upon their constructs.  Why crush your enemies when you can get the extra satisfaction of making them get patient and throw a tantrum that makes them deserved to be crushed?

  ...You know, on top of wanting to steal your plot artifacts.

  "Are the Naylor able to create another Heart of stone? And what would the rough equivalent value in goods or credits be?"

  Joe might need to bust out the big guns of 'technically, just buying one counts as any means necessary'.  But that probably would be well out of their budget.  But chained sidequests are also very oldschool.

As tempted as the narrator is to suddenly have game-show lights along with golem proudly announcing how you can win a heart of stone, this sadly doesn't happen.

Angel is staring at the golem.

The golem answers Pyrus, "Why I claim Angel is a Neylor is classified."

Angel gazes off. "Oh well."

The golem answers Joe, "Only Velocity can create another heart of stone. The value would be up to her, but she has given me permission to allow power-seekers like yourselves who ask such purchase questions with the following answer: Gift me 100 healthy, living people, perform the ritual, and you may receive a heart of stone."

Angel says, "What does the heart of stone do?"

The golem answers, "Once per day and once per night, the heart of stone has the power to turn any one person you wish to stone. The exception is it cannot turn Velocity or a Neylor to stone."

Larry raises an eyebrow. "If that's to be believed, that would be a super weapon. Anyone you can think of. That could be political leaders, influential people..."

Pyrus grins playfully at Angel.  "You are Velocity!  But the psychic samurai erased your memory.  And for some strange reason, people who opposed the mind-wipe still don't tell you until the big reveal moment."

He looks over at Larry.  "The way things like this usually work is that it sounds way more useful than it really is.  You finally get the boss's weapon then find out, 'Oh it runs off an ultra-rare or ultra-expensive fuel that the boss used up to use the weapon on you.'  And, 'The maximum range is exactly the diameter of the boss fight's arena.'  And, 'As it turns out, it only turns someone into stone for a few seconds.  Plenty of time for the boss to kick you into the pool of lava in the arena, but not terribly handy elsewhere.'  I'll bet there's tons of catches like that 'cause he so freely tells us what it can do and how to get one."

"Even so.  Dominus could easily scoop 100 healthy people out of the prisons for the exchange.  Unless...  do minor things like piercings, anti-social behavior, or an addiction to caffeine disqualify you from being labeled 'healthy?'"

Pyrus figures that though he's partly made of stone, the heart of stone would likely kill him just as quickly as it would a squishy, so he doesn't bother asking.

  "As long as we are picking apart trends Pyrus, the simplest one would be 'never said you would get one, only that you may slipped in after 'Make mere mortals argue if selling a hundred people is immoral or easy'."

Angel asks, "So are we permitted to take these guys off world so they will wake again?"

The golem answers, "Yes."

Angel says, "Well then let's get these guys out of here at least. The golem has made it clear we can rescue our guys. From orbit, we can report what we learned and see what Dominus wants to do about it."

Larry says, "He doesn't wanna be bothered with updates. We were given a mission. We can take these guys to our ship so they will be on life support or whatever, sure, but our mission is clear."

Murphy nods. "Yeah. Let's regroup at the ship and discuss our options."

Pyrus is guessing that the golem's "yes" answers his question as well.

"Well dang.  100 'healthy' people won't be so easy to scoop up after all."

He scoops up one of the KO'd guys, expecting someone else to handle the second, and heads with the group back toward the ship.

Once out of hearing distance of the golem, he answers Joe, "I'm guessing the goddess worded it that way to cover contingencies like, 'Here's your 100 people, you worthless, ugly, excuse for a deity.'  I'd refuse the deal if someone were like that, but I've heard that even criminals have to honor their verbal contracts even in the face of rude customers or else their name is mud.  So on top of being stuck with having to do business with people they hate, they have to punch their customers for the insult lest they be called wimps.  Then the customer escalates and what could have been something as simple as, 'I won't do business with potty-mouths' turns into a shoot-out.

"I say this because most dark deities in games don't bother with verbal loop-holes and just blatantly go back on their promises saying stuff like, 'You were a fool to think I would honor the agreement!  And a worm like you cannot do anything about it!'  But there were admittedly one or two that were such sticklers for wording that one claimed, 'I am the deity of Time Itself!' because of a grammatical error in the treaty between the gods."*

*Borrowed from one of the many maximum volume, long-winded oldschool D&D lore expositions Rick assaults my ears with from time to time.  Seth: "You should weaponize his voice."

  "Hopefully they will have something to say beyond 'We showed up and then got put to sleep' or 'We don't NEED your help!' posturing."

  After Pyrus gives his exposition about crime decorum, Joe comments "As usual, wanting to look good is the main concern involved above all else."

Larry carries a couple scientists. He's a hulking lion, after all.

To Joe, Murphy says, "Well yeah. If you don't posture, you're dead. And even if you didn't have that to worry about, who enjoys being rejected?"

Larry shrugs. "Not everyone cares how they look... but I sure do. Just look at this beautiful mane." he swishes his main a bit.

Soon, the group is at the ship and the scientists are laid upon a med table. The ship takes off and goes into orbit. When questioned, the scientists explain the chain of events:

1) Arrive on location. Set up equipment.
2) Find heart of stone. Examine. Get sidetracked by trying to translate writings.
3) Find room with golem. Tell golem there is nobody here, so the stone is up for grabs and they are taking it for science.
4) Black out. Wake up in ship with PCs asking them questions.

The scientists very clearly demonstrate a complete lack of any awareness for anything that isn't science and are baffled as to why a golem would knock them out for wanting to do science.

To be fair, they also seem consistent. Like the kind of people who would be happy if someone stole their equipment in order to perform science.

Pyrus laughed from Larry's hair funny.

"Yup!  Gorgeous!"

Later:  Welp.  Looks like Joe was right again.  Nothing useful to say.

"More confirmation that games really do reflect real life.  These guys sound exactly like the NPC scientists in Malevolent Denizens.

'With the right amount of genius and a touch of perceived insanity, science can conquer anything!'"

  "I'm fairly certain I'm still here due to resisting the temptation to posture, Murphy.  But like everything context changes so much." being overlooked by self important maniacs of high rank also has it's uses.

  After the exposition, Joe comments "They actually got to the heart though, Pyrus." Does it still count as making more progress when they had to be rescued after a party wipe?

  "Do you remember what route you took to reach the hear without seeing the Golem? Though I suppose if you didn't see any doors and openings larger than the heart itself, we've got more problems than what guards we do know of."

Murphy looks at Pyrus. "You're catching on, kid."

The scientists show a 3D map of the ruins and show where they found the heart.

Angel says, "And you didn't take it because you weren't sure if it was trapped." ironic that they were cautious about physical traps, but didn't understand that telling a golem your intentions was a bad idea.

Murphy says, "So let's use a robot to grab it remotely. If it's trapped, our not being there will mean the trap won't harm us. Joe, can you fetch out one of them drones?"

Pyrus grins at Murphey.

To Joe he shrugs.  "The mad scientists of Malevolent Denizens succeeded in making the 'perfect organism' too.  Just that 'success' was the disaster that drove the plot.  I'm expecting that this Heart of Stone thing is like that.  Where the universe would be better off if we didn't succeed in getting it."

"Oh yay!  Drones!  So much fun!"

Pyrus pulls a wireless controller out of his pack and punches a few buttons to set it up for interfacing with drones.  He pauses a moment in thought.

"Ya know.  I'm realizing Dominus gave us this mission objective without knowing the important information that the Heart of Stone belongs to some dark goddess.  So... suppose we succeed.  Goddess finds out.  Causes way more trouble for Dominus than the Heart is worth.

"Cutscene: 'I'm surrounded by idiots!  You should have known better than to steal from some spooky super-powered being!  If I wanted mindless servants on important missions, I'd send robots!  Agents with brains are supposed to be able to make basic common-sense decisions such as when an objective is no longer worthwhile!'"

Pyrus shrugs.  "I'm game either way."