A few hours later, the parts of the stolen golem are strewn all about the town square. On Volta's half of the investigation, the gears and cogs are methodically sorted by size and type - meanwhile, Galvani is digging through the interior of the golem, and throwing out pieces behind him haphazardly, apparently searching for something.
"Will you stop that, Galvani? We need to keep track of all of these parts!" Volta groans, as he wanders over to start picking up and sorting the pieces.

"Not really, Volta," Galvani replies, his be-goggle'd face poking up out of the hole he punched into the golem. "We only need to find one piece. The heart."

"The golem's heart?" Volta asks, as he inspects a gear with a calipers to properly measure it. "Why?"

"See, if you remembered my thirty seventh dissertation, you would know why!" Galvani says, crossing his arms as Volta rolls his eyes. "A golem heart has a unique magical signature. It'll give us some ideas of what kind of mana went into the powering of the golem, and that..."

"Will tell us where the maker most likely is! Of course, it's obvious now," Volta says, slapping his forehead with his palm. "Alright, keep looking for it. I'm still going to keep track of the parts, though - it might be useful to have a golem on our side, no?" Volta grins, as he places the gear in its exact grid-line-position'd place.

"Yeah, whatever you say..." Galvani says, diving back into the golem. "This heart is a real bit-"

"Ho, strangers!" A voice shouts from across the town square, startling Voltani.

A large group of people are assembled at the far end of the town square, wielding weapons, some of them even gathering mana for spells. At the front of the crowd is the town guard, the only ones with armor in the crowd. The sheriff of the town guard stands at the front of the crowd, smoking a cigar calmly - and with a chainblade hoisted on his shoulder, finger on the trigger to start its engine.

"Yes, hello," Volta says, smiling and waving. "As you can see, we've taken the liberty of felling the golem for you!" The girl from earlier raises her head from the crowd to get a better look, her eyes wide in surprise - apparently she didn't expect the intrepid scientists to survive.

"We can see that," the sheriff replies, chewing on his cigar. "We are wondering why two obviously very powerful mages are here, commandeering golems for their own, as of now mysterious, purposes. We..." the sheriff trails off, taking a puff of his cigar. "...are dubious of strangers right now, for obvious reasons." He waves his hand in the general direction of the golem's torso.

"Well, you see, this is all easy to explain..." Volta thinks about it, and realizes that maybe telling them they were sent on a quest by a mysterious robed cleric is not exactly the best explanation.

"Go on then," the sheriff says, his brow furrowing in suspicion "Explain it."

Trial IV

Your task: convince the people to trust you!