Taken for and equal indeed ... Dougal first accuses you of being that which Clerval warned, a busybodied apprentice bugging him with requests for help (actually, it sounds as though Clerval has recently been jumping on Dougal's last nerve). After some thourough explanation, you get across that you are only looking for information about the guardians.

When you get him to talk about how he helped, he explains his part was the most significant. He's placing alot in HIS abilities ... what HE had to do ... perhaps "massaging his ego" will eek some information out of him. It works. He explains the need for 5 each of Mind, Body and Steam runes which he made and without which the effort would have undoubtedly failed.

With your polite demeanor, Dougal turns out to be quite helpful. He provides everything you need to craft the Steam runes: 10 (noted) Pure essence (2 each for a combination rune), a Binding necklace (so you don't fail any combinations), and both one fire talisman and one water talisman (one of which will be spent in the combination).

Edvin is lost in thought at the far east room of the basement. As you speak with him you might notice he had a hand in creating much of the puzzles, tasks, and even dangers of the Arena's training areas. He also seems to have been the one who constructed the guardians. He has a tool to carve rune essence in order to make the guardian bodies but he wants a favor of you. If you help him test his (formerly dangerous?) new maze, he will hand over the tool and give you the information he has on the guardians.

The hardest part of the maze is that you cant see the signs on the floor in all of the rooms. Movement through the room is not unlike chess movement except you have to go all the way to the edge with a rook or bishop move. The breakdown of the symbols is as follows. The portals with a box of symbols (king) take you to the next room in that portal's direction. Portals with a single symbol (pawn) move you one room north. Those with a cross (rook) take you to the last room in that portal's direction on the edge of the maze. This is the same for the diagonal symbol portals (bishop) except its the last room on the edge of the maze in the same direction as the symbols. Lastly, the L-hook marked portals (knight) take you to the room they point out, two rooms in that direction and one room to the side.

If the maze is the same for everyone, I found the following combination worked for me. King portal west, knight portal north, king portal north, bishop portal north. Edvin speaks to you when you succeed, telling you to use the switch to exit. He tells you that the guardians are based on golems such as those found in Uzer in the Kharidian Desert. The only real differences are the magic used to give them thought and that they were built from rune essence. He gives you his tool which he used to form the golems.

Edvin's Tool

Wizard Shug spends a great deal of time sleeping in the library on the second floor of the Arena. Watch out when you wake him up though! He can regail you with stories for days going on and on about this trip he took or that time in a bar with Sedridor. You'd better have some pizzazz ... pizzazz points from the Training Arena that is. He won't give you what your after until you have at least 5 points.

When you do get him around to the particulars of the guardians, he mentions that he gave Edvin, his apprentice at the time, 20 pieces of essence and two enchanted emeralds for each guardian. It was Shug who devised a means to enchant the gem on its own. He explains how and tells you that you could do the same on his workbench which is still in the basement.