Golems

An effigy of a man built in our image, sustained through Miracle and birthed by Gnosis. That is a golem, a human soul housing a body of surpassing physical tenacity. Break them apart, put them back together, extract the core of them and place it into another body. They are the ideal servant, soldier, and tool, depending on the structure used to make them. Indeed, any civilized land can boast at least a few, though places which have them so common as to render certain professions obsolete is a rare and wondrous sight.

A golem's body is distinct from a mass of inanimate matter given life. Any magus can bid rocks to move or water to flow upwards if they wish, or rotting corpses to shamble about. Granted a pseudo-soul in a form unfitting for stable perpetuation, they rise to accomplish a task and then fall apart as worldly law asserts itself. A golem is more complex. For the soul to reliably puppet it it must be articulated or plastic in some way. It must be capable of standing and walking wholly on its own, if one puppeted it with but strings and poles as they do props in an opera, or as simple automatons may. This reduces strain on the possessing soul, thus ensuring it shall not exhaust itself in the manipulation of its own form. It requires artisanal skill and scholarly knowledge, the product of a civilized profession. A golemist must be a tradesman as much as a sorcerer, or tradesmen alone working in tandem with a magus.

And it must indeed have a soul, a spark which bids its body move, which grants it the capacity to plot and adapted to circumstances as well as any man, or close enough. In truth, most such souls grow stunted, erratic, or numb. Most of them are coaxed from nothing by ritual, ensuring that it mimics the patterns of a man as closely as possible as surely as a babe's spiritual mote would coalesce in the womb. Instead of the warm confines of a mother's body, however, it is instilled into the cold frame of its artificial host. These must then be raised as a child would be, a time-consuming process, though they often are fed a truncated version of reality that suits them to their task. The second option is to take the soul of a living or recently-dead mortal and place that in the body. This invariably produces trauma, amnesia, and dysphoria, but they re-learn what skills they have lost in months rather than years, though they retain the biases and urges they had in life, rather than a perfect blank slate to mold into an ideal servant. 

This body and soul must be maintained by a binding, a spiritual anchor which serves to ensure the soul connects to the body. So long as the binding is intact, it may be retrieved or restored, and the golem made whole again. All other parts of the body are wholly replaceable. Death and dismemberment are but temporary concerns.

Lastly, a golem needs fuel to function. This may be mechanical or spiritual in nature. For some golems, the animating power is entirely worldly, and the spirit merely directs the motion which would otherwise still exist. For others, the fuel strengthens and sustains the soul, allowing it to force otherwise inert matter to contort into musculature to propel its frame. If deprived of this fuel, the golem grows inert, but may be restored if it is granted what it hungers for. 

There are six widely recognized kinds of golem.

(Mostly) Universal Golem Traits

-With the exception of flesh golems, you do not heal HP naturally. Instead, you can only use your hit dice if you or another player or NPC succeeds on an easy relevant crafting check for the material that produced you, per hit die. Failure inflicts 1d6 damage instead. Any roll on the death and dismemberment table, aside from instant death, can be completely recovered from by a difficult crafting check, assuming you have access to replacement parts. This will probably require a trip back to town, unless you feel comfortable lugging spare limbs with you into a dungeon.

-Someone made you. Who? Why? If you're a runaway or your maker died, you might be sought as property, loot to be claimed by another adventuring party if yours is defeated. If you're working for someone, are you on a specific mission, or were you simply sent off to accumulate wealth for your master? Perhaps to pay your debts and become free? And if you are free, legally recognized, you best have the papers to prove it, or live in the same land that freed you. Move too far away from there and such niceties are oft ignored. Sometimes a master can be a boon, a powerful patron to hide behind when there is threat of enslavement.

-Astounding tenacity of mind and spirit; the elements, disease, age, these have no hold over you. Certainly being frozen solid is bad, as is being tossed into a bonfire or crushed by a landslide, but mere heatstroke, frostbite, suffocation, these you need not fear. Not but accident or a violent death shall put you down. This is less of a comfort than one might think. You may also endure long periods of motionlessness or repetitive labor far better than a normal human; boredom has little hold on you. This is more of a comfort than one might think. It is not unheard of for a golem to be trapped for centuries, or endlessly following routines set out by their long-dead owners, only starting to think for itself again when interlopers interrupt their purgatorial state.

-Something is broken inside of you. A golem is an tragic figure, a soul shaped to dwell in a worldly thing of flesh and blood, forced into a form never meant to host it, all for the sake that humans may be kin to it and their desires its own. It may hunger despite never needing to eat. It may desire love despite a sexless body. Nothing fits quite right. You know you are wrong. You can only cope with this, never quash it.

-Golems don't get bonuses to stats, they get innate advantages and disadvantages. They are great at some things and terrible at others.  

Clay Golems

 

Lumpen, crude men, forged by the clumsy, blind groping of early gnosis. As durable as the earthenworks of a fortress and slow like a marching army, but just as inexorable. The first golems ever to be made by men, with dim minds and tireless bodies. Their labor was vital for the nascent magi, who raised their towers with these shambling servants while men yet devoured one another in mad abandon.

-You are made of amorphous clay (adv on STR) or hardened, jointed terracotta (adv on CON), disadvantage on INT checks, for the earth is crude and simple, and the mind within thus so.

-Your relevant healing skills are pottery, clay sculpting, and similar arts.  

-Double HP gain per level, halve stat gains. If you would gain only 1 stat point permanently by a given event, don't, but keep the next one you get.

-You require a ration of fresh blood every week. 1 liter is one ration, absorbed into the earth of your body.  Failure incurs a level of exhaustion.

-Your binding is a metal plate, traditionally silver, stamped with an intricate recursive script. You may choose any body part to place it on. 

Golems of clay are rugged creatures of hard labor. Wall-builders, ditch diggers. And guards too, roaming halls long after their inhabitants have ceased to be. They can work fixatedly for hours at even the most numbing of tasks. Of all the golems they are most respected, in a distant sort of way, like one might admire a fine building, and the early True Faiths used them in great numbers, so they are oft associated with the divine. Those with the will to venture out are often blunt and direct in their doings, and almost always owned by someone who has sent them to accomplish a task. A clay golem who truly desires freedom is a rare thing indeed, and it is near always the result of placing a developed soul within one rather than a blank slate.

Puppet Golems

 

Though all golems could be considered to be a kind of puppet, puppet golems specifically refer to rigid bodies manipulated by ropes and pulleys, affixed to a central series of coils within its hollow ribcage. The children of carpentry and scrimshaw, and like professions. They stumble about, they clatter, clack, and trip. Their voices are sharp, high, and grating

-You are made of heavy wood (adv on CON) or carved bone (adv on WIS), disadvantage on INT checks. Not much room for cleverness in all that rigid clumping nonsense.

-Your relevant healing skills are carpentry, scrimshaw, and anything specifically to do with puppets or marionettes.

-Blunt damage does double damage, piercing/slashing half. 

-Choose to be made of bone or wood. If bone, your feeding method is as a clay golem. If wood, every other long rest must be done in direct sunlight. Failure incurs a level of exhaustion. 

-Your binding is a knot in the center of your torso, pulsing and quivering like a heart as it moves the stiff joints of your body. 

Puppet golems are the most common type by far, but thinly spread (and no manner of golem can truly be considered common), as individuals or small troupes, or bands under the employ of a master. Their roles are varied, with minds keen enough for complicated tasks even if they often fall short of human intellect. By many they are put on the same level as imbeciles and dung collectors, or actors and prostitutes, but others are beloved fixtures of a street or hamlet.

Textile Golems

 

Bagmen, living dolls, walking toys, call them what you like. They adorn palaces and manors, the innards of opulent cities. Or they toil in the fields, ragged and patched over a dozen times. They are fragile things, an expression of wealth, best kept indoors. To many they are the most inoffensive and quaint manner of golem. To the mind trapped in such a fragile body, it is a long indignity of delicate servitude.

-You are made of fine silks and velvets (adv on CHA) or leather and burlap (adv on DEX),  disadvantage on STR checks from the weakness of your body.

-Your relevant healing skills are weaving, sewing, and other similar skills.

-Fall damage is halved, but if it would set your HP to 0 you explode into stuffing from the impact.

-Almost no one will take you seriously unless you've done/are doing something drastic (killed a man, unmasked an assassin, wearing a tanned human face over your own, etc) or have acquired a reputation and distinguishing markings.

-Your binding is your stuffing, your psyche distributed across your homogeneous innards. You are affected by bleed maluses, and die for good if killed by such an effect, or if your stuffing is otherwise scattered. 

Textile golems are firmly divided between those meant for the upper class and those employed for the lower. A lord may commission a magus to create silken attendants for their estate or a living doll, smart as a toddler, for their child to dote upon. While they are fragile, they are lovingly repaired and preserved, testament to the status of their owners. They have short leashes, of course, and a runaway is vulnerable indeed. Then there are the unlucky ones, the ones of sack cloth and crude leather, sparked to life for a few short years of toil before they fall apart. Maybe longer if they can keep themselves patched. Taking the soul of a person and making them into one of these is considered an exceptional kind of cruelty associated with corrupt and sadistic aristocrats.

Flesh Golems

 

A tragedy. You feel everything a person does, do all that they do, but slightly off. Wrong. Depersonalized, detached, dysphoric. And deeply uncanny. Everything about you is incorrect. The way you move, smile, breath. But you are tenacious like vermin, and all you need to keep going is another corpse for the pile. No wonder there's so many of you around. Once you're made, replenishment is a trivial matter. The pitchforks and torches less so.

-You are made from the parts of strong people (adv on STR), dextrous people (adv on DEX) or beautiful people (no benefits save your self-esteem and the envy of your kin), disadvantage on CHA as your deeply uncanny nature puts off all but the most tolerant of folk. Yes, even intimidation. Trying to intimidate someone can provoke a panicked attack, screaming, fainting, whatever doesn't help. 

-Your relevant healing skills are surgery, butchery, and other similar skills. Medicine does not count, just the raw assemblage or dismantling of flesh. However, you do not need to use this skill to heal with hit dice, only to recover from the death and dismemberment table. Flesh handles itself, after all.

-You must consume rations as a normal human. You can't starve to death, but if fully exhausted become immobile. You can be afflicted by pain and bleeding effects.

-If you lose a limb, you may easily affix one of roughly equivalent size to your body at the cost of -1 CHA for as long as the part is attached, unless you succeed a difficult medicine check to strip out muscle and file down bone to make it a match for you (failure destroys the part). You may pay a chirurgeon to do this for you.

-Your binding is your brain, as a human. It only plays the seeming of a worldly seat of consciousness, being now the throne of your sorcerous psyche. It need not fear oxygen deprivation or concussion, but being minced, slashed, or crushed is of course fatal. 

Golems of flesh occupy a delicate societal space, blurring the line between living dead, reborn mortal, and animated tool. In some places they are used liberally, with their inhabitants at least somewhat acclimated to their strangeness, while in others they are wholly abhorred. Their sole reliable refuge is the Gospel of Eternity, whose adherents often make them into artificial angels and holy guardians, and in general are most accepting of the unliving. Elsewhere they are  more often exiles or property. Even so, of all the things one may call undead they are the most tolerated by far, even if it still means warding gestures, muttered curses, and the threat of scapegoating hanging over their head. Their existence is a cruel irony; given bodies which may feel all they did in life (albeit distant and numbed), the very people they desire to be among cannot help but reject them, with rare few exceptions. 

Wax Golems 

Wax, rendered fat and oil, the detritus of life fit to host it again, sculpted into unnatural fascimile. A brazen lantern in its breast, burning with the flame of life. Quicksilver fast, in body and mind. Reckless. A fair enough maid or butler or what have you, in some places, but also a hound and a murderer, darting from an alley or around a corner and sticking claws of brass through some poor fool's skull.

-You are mostly made of wax, soft and warm, and boneless (adv on DEX) or with a skeleton of brass (adv on CON), disadvantage on WIS as the flame of your soul compels you to throw caution to the winds.

-Your relevant healing skills are waxworking, candlemaking, or anything to do with mannequins or sculpture using soft materials.

-You may open up your flame chamber to shine as torch for no cost, and may glow as a match at will. You are also a source of flame and heat. Once per long rest you may emit flame as a breath attack, [level]d4 damage in a 15' 90 degree cone.

-Your wax body is exceptionally malleable. With an appropriate check you can shape your features at will (though you will always look like a thing of wax). Only the design of your lantern (or skeleton if applicable), and any identifying marks carved upon it, are lasting identifiers. Typically you are monocolored (often white, purple, red, or other common hues), but can use makeup to add depth to your features.

-Your binding is your flame, wrapped in a ribcage-like lantern where your heart should be. You must breathe in and out to provide it with oxygen, and drink oil (or in extreme cases, kindling or strong spirits) to fuel it, at the same rate as one would refuel a normal lantern. When you are at rest, it dims and requires a negligible amount of fuel.

It is rare to find golems of wax outside castles or cities, though old ruins sometimes host them. They are creatures of dark alleys and long night watches, or a blade in the dark, whistling towards its prey. They are the rarest of common golems, their utilities niche but appreciable.

Clockwork Golems

 

Beautiful, pleasant, sophisticated, valuable. A thing of brass and gear, made by some of the most skilled artisans of the era, needing only winding to keep moving (and also, a hand to wind your mainspring which isn't your own). 

-Exterior plates of porcelain (adv on CHA) or precious aluminium (adv on CON) or gears bare to the world to fit in the modular difference engine welded to you (adv on INT) and a finely tuned watch of a mind that leaves you disadvantaged in WIS.

-Your relevant healing skills are clockworking, engineering, and other similar skills.

-You may wield and maintain any clockwork (non-magical +1 item) items as naturally as your own body. Others need special training or checks to use them, not you. Even those great ticking colossi a human would need years to learn to pilot, you take to like a duck to water.

-Your mainspring must be wound up regularly, 2 hours of winding for every 1 hour of action. You can't do it to yourself, of course. You can store levelx10 hours of action in your mainspring, during which time you need not sleep, eat, or tire. If you would roll on the death and dismemberment table, you may instead opt to absorb the blow with what hours of winding remain. (if you have 6 hours left and roll a 12, you can spend them all to turn it into a 6)

-Your binding is your clockwork core, a ticking mass of tiny wires and gears, as subtle and nuanced as the bones of the inner ear but expanded to the size of a human organ. Only possible with the aid of a magus, it is the bottleneck which prevents the mass production of such marvels.

Golems of clockwork were the last widely-known form of golem from the days of the Reasoned World, arguably the height of the craft and of worldly artifice. With the reliance on the sophisticated mechanisms of civilization and the need for another to wind them, they were wholly dependent on those who produced them for survival, and so their loyalty is most assured out of all of the golems. It is quite rare to find one without a master, and those sent afield often wear their bondage proudly. They are a great work of art, after all, and for some this goes to their head. These days they are near solely the creation of cultivated folk, and they are often as snobbish as their masters.

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I'll admit this one is messy, I've been gnawing on it for awhile and just wanted to put the idea out there. There are lots of things called golems in fiction, aside from the traditional Jewish one. I have tried to winnow down the idea into something that makes sense to me. People love to conflate them with elementals but I don't like that. The golem of Prague was artisanal. Rabbi Loew needed to carefully shape a big clay man. Dr. Frankenstein needed his surgical acumen. Gepetto was assuredly a great puppet maker, he just needed the blue fairy to spark one of his creations to life. That is a golem to me, the marriage of craftsmanship with magic to imbue a complex and articulated body with life.

These ancestries are naturally strong in some ways, but I hope I have made them lopsided. For each strength, a glaring weakness, along with the fact that most are considered property, be it currently owned, stolen, or free for the taking. Considering what else I have written, I seek to balance them in regards to that.

Regarding repairs and enhancements, I would like them to be tied to mundane craftsmanship. That is, a clay golem must get repaired by a potter or sculptor, a puppet by a carpenter or scrimshaw-carver, textiles by weavers and stitchers, flesh by doctors and surgeons, wax by candlemakers, clockwork by mechanists, and so forth for any other variants which exist. I think it would add to the feeling of golems as distinct from elementals. If one were being cheeky they could be considered elementals of human industry; a flesh golem is a surgery elemental. You get the idea. They aren't products of nature or cosmological force, but craft bringing life to that which ought not have it. Rather than monsters, however, it moreso produces broken individual. Broken, terribly, tragically useful individuals.

Lastly, I leave you with a quote from E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Sandman, concerning the mechanical doll Olimpia:

“Yet it’s very strange that several of us have formed pretty much the same opinion about Olimpia. We think she is — you won’t take it ill, brother? — that she is singularly statuesque and soulless. Her figure is regular, and so are her features, that can’t be gainsaid; and if her eyes were not so utterly devoid of life, I may say, of the power of vision, she might pass for a beauty. She is strangely measured in her movements, they all seem as if they were dependent upon some wound-up clock-work. Her playing and singing has the disagreeably perfect, but insensitive time of a singing machine, and her dancing is the same. We felt quite afraid of this Olimpia, and did not like to have anything to do with her; she seemed to us to be only acting like a living creature, and as if there was some secret at the bottom of it all.”