History of Golems

Fiction: This page is a work of fiction by squashmonster

Humans, dwarves, kobolds, orcs, and most other life is comprised of creatures of many fleshes. A golem is a creature of a singular flesh. Despite this, most golems commonly seen are actually very physiologically similar to humans. Where a human has flesh and bones and blood, so does a golem. However, a golem's flesh is not made of flesh, nor its bone made of bone, nor its blood made of blood. An iron golem, for instance, is a creature of iron flesh, with iron bones, and molten iron coursing through its veins. They have only two major differences in anatomy from a human. Other than muscle, skin, bone, and blood, a golem has no other organs. More importantly, where a human keeps its brain, a golem keeps a holy scroll of one of the greater gods. A bone golem, for instance, has a holy scroll of Mortifer, whereas a green crystal golem has the holy scroll of Silva. This scroll is, of course, created entirely of one material: the iron golem's scroll is made entirely of iron, and its holy words written in iron ink.

The proper creation of a golem is a long and difficult process. The golem's body, while not terribly complicated, is often very difficult to create. To create an iron golem, for instance, one must first forge the iron skeleton -- almost as difficult as forging a fully articulated suit of armor, this is the easiest step. The muscles must be created by individually stretching iron wires across the joints of the golem's body, with room left in between them at regular intervals for blood. The skin must be created in the same manner as a suit of armor. And the blood itself must be melted and poured into the golem just as the scroll itself is placed into its head -- too soon and it would melt the muscles together, too late and the golem would come to life and immediately die of lack of blood.

However, properly created golems are rare. It is unknown if any created this way still walk the earth. Ages ago, not many years after the first golems were created, the gods began providing their followers with golem head scrolls that would perform much of the work without the delicate process. It was not long until Loricatus was providing his followers with iron scrolls that would take any roughly human-shaped iron lump with a hole in its head and create a fully functional servant. Much as they copied angels from Dulcis, all the other gods quickly stole this idea.

Infuscor created the first scrolls that would shape arbitrary lumps of material into the required form. Not to be outdone, Sophos created parchment scrolls that would convert themselves into the right material when used, provided it was a material Sophos favored.

Some time after all the gods had copied this from each other, the elder light mage Yenralvitc The Direct created a simple scroll that would determine what material something was made of and burn portions of itself depending on what it was. He attached this scroll to a scroll from each god and set it to burn all but the appropriate scroll to a given material. He used his impressive array of magical powers to create thousands of these scrolls, which he planned to use to debase the various golem scroll monopolies to which he objected.

Yenralvitc was smited by multiple gods at the same time for this, and his scrolls scattered to the winds. However, even today they are still found fairly frequently due to the sheer number he created. These scrolls usually being available, the gods stopped provided scrolls of their own. Despite his death, Yenralvitc's goal was still more or less accomplished.