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Golems of Glantri

by Cab Davidson from Threshold Magazine issue 35

Extract of a lecture given at Dunadale Technical College by visiting professor Aurélie "L’Animatrice" Desjardins of the Great School of Magic.

Bonsoir, mes amis. I am glad you have asked me here today to describe some of the more unusual and, how do you say particulier? Ah, oui, idiosyncratic, golems and constructs of les Principautés de Glantri. I suppose that when invited to give such a talk at an august établissement d’enseignement it is incumbent upon the speaker to establish crédibilité, and I have to impress upon you, the cream of Alphatian youth, why you should listen to some old foreign duffer, oui?

Well, as you know, I am Professeur de Constructions Cagiques at the Great School of Magic in Glantri, a position I have held for some 25 years now, and since that unfortunate nastiness between our nations a few years ago, I have been part of a programme to try to rebuild some bridges between our peoples in the hope that we can resist any future temptation to wipe each other out. And while we cannot claim that our little project has solved all of the world’s problems, we can take some comfort from the fact that we have played a small part in keeping our peoples from a state of mutual mass murder.

So, with experience both making and studying the many forms of automaton we have in Glantri (to the point where I have had the epithet L’Animatrice conferred upon me), I am here to share with you an overview of some of the creations I believe to be somewhat less common in your kingdoms here.

Our attitude to constructs sets us apart from other nations, especially the Alphatian kingdoms. While you in Alphatia study magic to create art, we aspire to create magic AS an art, and this ethos is found in all of our endeavours. So sometimes if our golems seem to be rather more theatrical than yours, in that they have appearances and functions that seem to be almost at odds, I urge you as scholars to try to understand that there is always a method in our apparent madness. What may seem to you superfluous is often, to us, a synergy of form and function taken to a level or artistic perfection.

But, anyway, without further delay I will start by describing some of our golems ordinaires before moving on to our more unique constructs.

Golems Ordinaires

In many ways, of course, a golem is a golem. But in Glantri we consider what a golem will be like to live with – how will it look in our princely estate or guarding the gates of a walled encampment against orcs. We like our golems to command a certain presence, to look the part as well as act it.

Thus our armour golems are the perfect guards within the home. Ever vigilant, decorative and trustworthy. Whereas when we go campaigning, it is our tin golems who are in essence animated pennants, they wear the livery of our houses and the symbols of our ranks. To shock our foes, to lead our men into battle, we have the flame-belching horror of the pyrites golems, dazzling their foes before immolating them. Whereas, to stand guard at the gates are the trusty fluorspar golems – my own Blue John being a fine example thereof. Yes, you can pet him. I think he actually likes it. Let us go into the details of each thus…

Image: Armour Golem
https://pandius.com/ArmourGolem.png
Armour Golem, original drawing by Jeffrey Kosh
(https://jeffreykosh.wixsite.com/jeffreykoshgraphics/home).

Golem, Armour*

Leather Scale Chain
AC: 7 6 5
HD: 4* 5* 6*
Move: 180' (60') 150' (50') 120' (40')
Attacks: 1 weapon
Damage: By skilled weapon
No. Appearing: 1(1) 1(1) 1(1)
Save As: F2 F3 F3
Morale: 12 12 12
Treasure Type: Nil Nil Nil
Intelligence: 4 4 4
Alignment: Neutral Neutral Neutral
XP Value: 100 250 450

Banded Plate Suit
AC: 4 3 1
HD: 7* 8* 10*
Move: 90' (30') 60' (20') 30'(10')
Attacks: 1 weapon
Damage: By skilled weapon
Save As: F4 F4 F5
Morale: 12 12 12
Treasure Type: Nil Nil Nil
Intelligence: 4 4 4
Alignment: Neutral Neutral Neutral
XP Value: 850 1,200 1,750

Image: Armour Golem2
https://pandius.com/armourgolem2.jpg

Armour golems are favoured for use as decorative guards or sentries, used in castles, palaces and homes of renown as tireless watchers, able to remain on post and guard a location such as a door, corridor or room for years on end without falter, questioning or needing sustenance or relief. They are typically highly decorated, taking the form of ritual or high-status armour on display as if mounted as a suit, blending seamlessly into the typically ostentatious decorations favoured by the wealthy.

Armour golems are primarily sentries, and their capacity to observe danger and react is second to none. They cannot be surprised, and while many are quite slow in movement terms their finely tuned combat instincts give them +2 to individual initiative. They fight with weapons, often swords, spears, pole weapons or flails, and wealthy owners often use them to both display and to protect magical weapons, and such is their skill that they fight with skilled weapon mastery with all melee weapons. They may also use shields if they have a free hand, gaining the standard bonus of -1 to AC.

As golems they are immune to sleep, charm and hold spells, all forms of magical cold and all mind-affecting magics, and can only be struck with magical weapons. Leather, scale mail and chain mail golems take half damage from all blunt weapons, while banded mail, plate mail and suit armour golems are immune to all missile weapons.

Image: Fluorspar Golem
https://pandius.com/FluorsparGolem.png
Fluorspar Golem, original drawing by Jeffrey Kosh
(https://jeffreykosh.wixsite.com/jeffreykoshgraphics/home).

Golem, Fluorspar*

AC: 4
Hit Dice: 7**
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 1 bite or special
Damage: 2d6 or special
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: Fighter 7
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 1,250

Usually only crafted in regions where deposits of fluorspar, a crystalline mineral also known as fluorite, is common, fluorspar golems are typically made in the form of huge dogs, standing 5' tall at the shoulder. Usually violet or purple, these crystalline golems can be any of a range of colours including green, blue, yellow, turquoise and burgundy, depending on the source of the mineral used to create them. All of them emit a dim glow to a range of 10', making creeping up on them almost impossible (they are surprised on a 1 on 1d10). They also have an excellent sense of smell, their entire surface being sensitive to scents, and they can track any enemy flawlessly by scent.

Image: Fluorspar Golem2
https://pandius.com/Fluorspargolem2.jpg

Like all golems they are immune to sleep, charm and hold spells, all forms of mind magic, and to cold-based attacks. They can only be struck by magical weapons. They also have some peculiar interactions with other forms of magic and attacks. Fire-based attacks inflict only half damage on them, as their crystal structure can convert heat into light. All creatures (other than other fluorspar golems) within 1' per point of fire damage a fluorspar golem takes must make a save vs. dragon breath or be blinded for 3d6 turns. Light-based attacks (such as continual light or light spells used to try to blind a creature) are reflected from them back upon casters. Likewise, a fluorspar golem running towards an enemy can, by changing direction or twisting, generate a burst of light in a cone 30' long and 30' wide at its far end, blinding creatures therein that fail a saving throw vs. dragon breath for the same amount of time. A fluorospar golem must only run for 30' in a round before stopping to generate this attack form.

Image: Pyrites Golem
https://pandius.com/pyritesgolem2.jpg

Golem, Pyrites*

AC: 3
HD: 8**
Movement Rate: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 cutlass or 1 spark burst
Damage: 2d8 (cutlass) or special (spark burst)
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: Fighter 8
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 2
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 1,750

Pyrites golems, also known as fool’s-gold golems, are crafted from iron pyrites, usually in the form of a humanoid with a grafted-on ragged, sharp blade resembling a cutlass. They shine like fool’s-gold, often tricking observers into believing that they are crafted from precious metal. A strange quirk of pyrites as a material renders granting such a golem vision a difficult task, and this is achieved using a single crystalline eye (usually glowing an eerie red) for visible light, and a dark, cloth-covered eye (often in the form of an eye patch) for infrared light, granting them 60' infravision. To best operate with infravision they usually wear large, wide-brimmed hats to prevent any stray light interfering. They have a toothy, fearsome demeanour, with jagged pyrites crystals forming a crude maw. When approaching an enemy and about to attack, this mouth grinds, releasing a harmless but bright shower of sparks, creating a creaking, eerie “Yo-ho-ho” sound, requiring all hearing it within 60' to make a saving throw vs. spells or run in fear for 1d6 rounds.

The most feared attack from a pyrites golem is a burst of sparks, created by running the handle of their cutlass down the opposite arm. A shower of burning pyrites is projected forwards in a cone, 30' long and 30' wide at the end. All creatures in this area must make a saving throw vs. dragon breath or take damage equal to the golem’s hit point total.

They are immune to sleep, charm, hold and slow effects, to all mind-affecting magic, and can only be struck by weapons of +2 or greater enchantment.

Image: Tin Golem
https://pandius.com/TinGolem.png
Tin Golem, original drawing by Jeffrey Kosh
(https://jeffreykosh.wixsite.com/jeffreykoshgraphics/home).

Golem, Tin*

AC: 5
HD: 3*
Movement Rate: 60' (20')
Attacks: 1 weapon or 1 clang
Damage: by weapon or special (clang)
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: Fighter 3
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 3
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 45

The tin golem is a medium-sized, clunky automaton often created to act as a guard or watcher, typically when more advanced or expensive materials are in short supply. Standing about six feet tall, the tin golem has a roughly humanoid shape, its body composed of sheets of hammered tin strips riveted together. They emit a hollow, metallic echo with each movement, with joints that creak and groan if not recently oiled. They are usually painted in the colours of whichever house, guild or army that has paid for their construction, as symbols of power and strength, quite often bearing heraldic symbols and icons.

Image: Tin Golem2
https://pandius.com/tingolem2.jpg

While not the most resilient or intelligent of golems, the tin golem compensates this with a unique clang ability, which can disrupt and disorient nearby foes. Once every 2 rounds, the tin golem can strike itself in the chest or clap its tin arms together to produce a resounding metallic clang. All creatures within a 15-foot radius must make a saving throw vs. paralysis or be stunned for 1 round due to the disorienting noise. Creatures who fail the save also suffer a -1 penalty to attack rolls for 1d4 rounds as they recover from the reverberating sound.

Like all golems, tin golems are immune to sleep, charm, hold, and mind-affecting magic, as well as poison, and magical weapons are required to strike them. They are also unaffected by gas-based attacks due to their hollow and sealed tin bodies.

La Machine Rusée

I have observed that in Alphatia or Thyatis, you like to solve your domestic problems with slavery. This, to us, seems somewhat barbaric. Yes, in Glantri we can be hard taskmasters, but we don’t enslave others when we have magic to do the same work. And here we come to the most common construct in les Principautés, which would be La machine rusée, or the cunning machine. You have a similar device here, and you call it the contrivance, but whereas in Alphatia they are made to be simple, unadorned, even plain, in Glantri they are engraved with the crests of the noble houses from which they derive, and we believe that they even show a certain pride in their work. Let me describe them for you.

Contrivance*

AC: 2
HD: 10*
Move: Variable
Attacks: Nil (or special)
Damage: Nil (or variable)
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F10
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 10
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: Typically nil

Being designed and constructed largely as catch-all working golems, contrivances resemble 4'x4' cubes with a single small wheel on two opposite sides. The wheels can be turned individually or together, and are typically attached to cogs, belts, wheels or pulleys as part of either simple or complex mechanisms. Their role is to drag ploughs from a static location, pull carts with cogs and wheels attached to their central motor, beat clay, turn millstones, power bellows, or perform any of a multitude of other tasks in a techno-magical society. The capacity of contrivances to power machines, vehicles or war engines is limited by the engineering skills of their operators.

They are more intelligent than most other golems and have a limited capacity to speak (in a stunted, mechanical, almost robotic way). This can be used to command other golems that they are left in control of, using them to change fixtures and fittings according to their own instructed tasks. Golems being tireless automata never need repair, but they do need healing on occasion. A wise owner of a contrivance will regularly employ clerics to cast healing spells to keep them going, and if well cared for they may work indefinitely.

A contrivance without any fittings is of course useless in a fight, but depending on what they are being used for they may be dangerous guards. With wheels and blades attached and when mounted on carriages they can tear through bodies of troops, or when used to power siege engines they may make loading and loosing projectiles faster than is normally possible. Imaginative owners have put them to many such uses.

But in themselves contrivances are not aggressive and will not look for trouble.

Golems Reproducteurs

And now we come to the most unique class of golem that we have in Glantri. Les golems reproducteurs, or the reproductive golems as you would say. We do not entirely know from whence they came, or how they came to be. But we do know that they are distinctly different from any other form of golem in their capacity to replenish their numbers by making more of their kind. There are stories in the valleys of Klantyre of a creature that made the first of each, a hedge wizard of some sort with unique abilities, but we have no real information. Each of them seems harmless, in their own way, and indeed they can be found contributing usefully within communities. The scarecrow role seems obvious enough, of course, but they do more than repel birds – they can defend a crop against invading humanoids, even against monsters. Whereas a mannequin is more than just a shop dummy, they can take on aspects of running their masters’ businesses. The aunt Sally, however, is more enigmatic – they exist, they perpetuate, we are to be thankful that their populations rarely grow enough to become a problem.

Image: Scarecrow Golem
https://pandius.com/ScarecrowGolem.png
Scarecrow Golem, original drawing by Jeffrey Kosh
(https://jeffreykosh.wixsite.com/jeffreykoshgraphics/home).

Scarecrow*

AC: 7
HD: 2*
Movement Rate: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 weapon + 1 spore cloud
Damage: By weapon + special
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F1
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 5
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 24

Scarecrows, or straw golems, are perhaps the most primitive, weakest of all golems. They are simply formed of old clothes stuffed with sticks and straws, with heads formed of wurzels or swedes. They are essentially animated scarecrows, created by hedge wizards and rural guardians protecting their wards from the darkness in uncivilised borderlands.

They move in a jerky, slow fashion but can attack with any weapons that are to hand, often clubs, scythes, sickles, rakes and other agricultural implements. In addition to the use of weapons any creature in hand-to-hand combat with a straw golem must make a saving throw vs. poison each round or succumb to a coughing fit for 1d6 rounds as they breath in clouds of mould spores exuded by the golem, incurring -2 to hit and damage, cumulatively, per coughing fit still in effect.

Like all golems, scarecrows are immune to sleep, charm, hold, mind-affecting magic and attacks, and also to gases. They can only be struck by magical weapons. They are immune to all missile fire devices but make saving throws vs. fire-based attacks at -2, and take double damage from fire.

Image: Scarecrow Golem2
https://pandius.com/scarecrowgolem2.jpg

Strangely, scarecrows are able to perpetuate their own kind by constructing more scarecrows out of clothing, straw, and sticks. To be able to do so they must identify a sizable farm field in need of a scarecrow, they cannot simply make one where it is not needed. The new scarecrow feels the same sense of duty as its creator and will typically guard the field for as long as is needed.

Image: Mannequin Golem
https://pandius.com/mannequinsgolem.jpg

Mannequin*

AC: 7
HD: 3*
Movement Rate: 60' (20')
Attacks: 1 punch
Damage: 2d4
Number Appearing: 1d4 (1d4)
Save As: Fighter 3
Morale: 12 or 8
Treasure Type: Special
Intelligence: 5
Alignment: Lawful (employed), Chaotic (free)
XP Value: 45

Another creation of the mysterious and gifted hedge wizard who created both the straw golems and aunts Sally, the mannequin is a form of golem originally created for tailors to work with (pinning clothes on to or draping in fabrics or clothes) and to display their wares. They are essentially tailors’ dummies, crudely articulated at each joint, the neck and the centre of the torso, with more complex articulation allowing them to change waist size, chest size, shoulder shape, and leg and arm length at will. They are usually human-shaped but demi-human mannequins are known, and they come in male and female forms (but there is no discernible difference in behaviour of the two). They are capable of limited speech, with a child-like intonation and limited vocabulary, and tend towards being malicious gossipers.

When employed by a tailor who treats them well (allows them to gossip, supplies them with cups of tea in fine porcelain cups which they cannot drink but love to hold and look at, etc.) they are lawful creatures. If at all (in their eyes) treated badly they will leave their employers, and from that point their alignment becomes chaotic.

They cannot wield weapons, but their capacity to change shape to a limited extent gives them an advantage in combat. All hand-held attacks against them suffer a -2 to hit and damage, and the subterfuge offered by changing arm length and shape gives them a +2 to hit. Like other wooden golems they are immune to all missiles, like all golems they can only be struck by magical weapons, and are immune to sleep, charm, hold, and cold-based attacks. They fear fire-based attacks and save against them with a -2 penalty.

While not suffering extra damage from piercing weapons, such weapons as spears, short swords and the like send them into a rage; perhaps the memory of being stuck with pins causes this. If facing such weapons their morale is 12. They are immune to normal weapons, sleep, hold, charm, paralysis and all mind-affecting magic.

Like straw golems and Aunts Sally, the mannequins are able to craft more of their own kind. They can only do so when they have accumulated a high-value (above 100gp in worth) full set of clothing to equip their progeny. In the ‘wild’, those mannequins that have claimed their freedom obsess over fine clothes and jewels, and will attack and kill the best-dressed travellers they meet. They don’t carry treasure as such, but they are often found to be wearing several layers of fine, expensive clothes.

Image: Aunt Sally
https://pandius.com/auntsally.jpg

Aunt Sally*

AC: 7
HD: 3+3*
Movement Rate: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 slap
Damage: 2d8
Number Appearing: 1(1)
Save As: F2
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 4
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 65

The same gifted hedge wizard who first created scarecrows and mannequins also carved the first animated Aunt Sally, and by the same spark imparted the ability to these grotesque mannequins to craft more of their kind.

Aunts Sally starts off as hideous figurines of women, rarely more than 2'6" tall, resembling the dolls used as target practice in an old pub game where wooden clubs are thrown to knock the heads off the dolls while leaving the bodies in place. Naturally they strongly resent the practice and will remorselessly attack anyone playing such a game. Over many years their features wear thin, and old Sallies more resemble crude, ugly wooden dolls with few if any discernible human features.

They are golems, of a kind, and therefore can only be struck by magical weapons, are immune to mind-based attacks, gases, charms, and hold. Similarly to a wood golem they are also immune to missile fire weapons, such that arrows, crossbow bolts etc. cause them no harm.

While not desperately intelligent, they understand the weak spots that humans and humanoids have, and instinctively know to go for the throat, to try to remove the head (perhaps a racial memory of what they were constructed for). In the first round of combat they can leap up to 30' to attack the head, and if their first strike hits the victim must make a saving throw vs. death ray or die.

Aunts Sally are rare, perhaps because few of them see a purpose in creating more of their kind, and because the conditions in which they can do so are restrictive – they must purchase the wood they need, with gold that they have earned (opportunities for paid employment are few and far between for an aunt Sally). They tend towards the chaotic and evil end of neutral. They have been known to pose as aunt Sally dolls in pubs, their immunity to normal weapons making the vengeance they claim on drinkers playing what they view as a grotesque game unanswerable.