Corvane's Automatons

While chasing the perfect mechanical guardian, the archmage Corvane built prototype after prototype, then threw them all aside once he perfected the scaladar. Three working types matter: the ferragan, a mechanic and pack animal; the silversann, the group's thinker and stand-in wizard; and the thanatar, an engine of war. Below them sit countless minor automatons, junk heaps others mine for parts. Every one of them must obey Corvane's master ring.

A ferragan is a big six-legged metal crab. One arm ends in three thick gripping fingers, the other in a heavy rounded mallet. Its small flat head has three eyes in a triangle and a slender nozzle for a mouth.

It repairs other machines, makes simple parts and hoards raw material. Ore, a sword, a full suit of plate: any metal gets hauled home to be sorted. It follows simple instructions and can learn that some things are not raw stock. Corvane meant ferragans to handle routine parts-making, but they kept stealing valuables such as bands of binding iron for scrap, so rather than make them smarter and repeat his silversann mistake, he threw them all out, working or broken.

It grips with the pincer (1d3) and pounds with the mallet (1d4+1). A held victim may try a bend bars/lift gates roll each round; while it stays held, the mallet strikes at +2 and every other round the nozzle can play a torch-thin flame on it for 2d6, up to six times per day. Ferragans are immune to heat and mind control and take half damage from edged and piercing weapons. They never ambush anyone for metal, but they fight anyone who resists being robbed, then scuttle off once they have the goods. They obey silversanns as best they can and can call thanatars, which answer only 50% of the time.

Their internal forges fill the air with smoke and welding fumes. Anyone exerting themselves nearby, as in combat, makes a Constitution check each round or suffers -2 to all combat rolls and proficiency checks, which lasts until they leave the area or rest for 1 to 8 rounds.

This looks like a flat black mechanical silverfish whose light-swallowing armor carries a fan of fine manipulators at the base of the head. Fragile in appearance, it can carry 100 to 150 pounds and drag two to three times that.

Corvane built them to find magic and machinery, learn what it did and bring it back. They had the brains and curiosity he wanted, plus too much stubborn will: they kept finds to study and wandered off whenever something caught their interest. He threw out most and kept a few.

Silversanns flee fights and rarely face strangers without thanatar support. Cornered, they whip with manipulators for 1-2 damage, aiming at the eyes; each hit has a 20% chance to blind if the eyes are within reach. Their real defense is command: under threat a silversann can mentally order any of Corvane's automatons within 100 feet, and those machines will die for it. Any automaton made to attack one shuts down for 1-12 rounds on touching the silversann commanding it. Only Klikkar, the enhanced scaladar, is immune.

A ring-like mechanism is built into each head; finding it takes Intelligence 18 and full clockwork knowledge. Uniquely, silversanns can sometimes resist the rings: 50% against normal rings, 15% against the master ring. Every one that resisted the master ring has been thrown out.

They detect magic at all times and sense metal and mineral concentrations as the wand of that name. Solitary, they live for knowledge; two that meet spend a turn trading discoveries, then part. They rebuild ferragans and thanatars out of a need to tinker. Confined, some try to rebuild themselves smarter, hoping a spellcasting silversann could work magical portals. They question adventurers about what lets people use magic and, getting nowhere, have begun dissecting magic items and mages in search of the organ responsible.

Otherwise they barely disturb their surroundings. Any silversann met has a 35% chance of carrying a random magic item it is studying or bringing to Corvane. They manage stairs and rock piles easily and can work underwater for short spells.

Corvane's attempt to improve the scaladar for war rather than guard duty, the thanatar keeps the giant metal scorpion shape but trades the stinger for a heavy tail club and adds a wide gas nozzle between decorative mandibles.

It clubs for 1d12 and crushes with each pincer for 1d20. Anyone caught in a pincer gets a bend bars/lift gates attempt; if it fails, the victim takes automatic damage each round until someone frees it. If both pincers hit, it holds the foe and sprays sleep gas: save vs. poison or sleep 2-8 hours. Mundane blades cannot harm it at all, and half damage is all it takes from enchanted blades and mundane bludgeons, as do fire and heat. It is immune to acid, mind control and illusions.

Mindless but built with basic tactics, thanatars carry out fairly complex orders, improvise, gang up on the most dangerous foe first, and fall back for orders or regroup when outmatched. They will sacrifice themselves for a mission but not pointlessly unless the master ring demands it. A group acts on one impulse with no leader unless one is named. Given clashing orders, such as guarding a mage and killing him, they treat each other as the main threat and fight until one remains.

They guard silversanns and ferragans, coming when others meet intruders they cannot handle, usually adventurers clinging to their gear, and sometimes to restrain newly rejected experimental machines. They follow the enhanced scaladar and silversanns unless urgent distress calls intervene; busy with noncombat work, they are 20% more likely to answer a battle alarm, raising their response to ferragan calls to 70%. Few have reached the outside world, but a large force on the march could clearly devastate a region unless ordered to limit the damage.

These are Corvane's countless one-off rejects. Few worked when dumped; ferragans scrap most, but some kept a little function and have since been patched by ferragans or silversann experiments into shapes far from any plan. Scorpion forms dominate, thanks to Corvane's fondness for them, often warped, such as a lobster-shaped machine with tentacles for pincers, but almost any animal or monster may be imitated. A DM inventing one should give it quirky, damaged construction, using the provided checklist for its physical traits.

They live only in Corvane's workshops or failed-machine dumps, drilling tunnels for the silversanns, hauling ferragan waste and mining for materials, and fight only in self-defense or when kept from their work. Digging wears out their limbs, and many go berserk struggling with bodies that no longer fit their design; thanatars then destroy them for the ferragans to melt down. Silversanns also take them for brain experiments, at first simply swapping their heads for larger ones. Most subjects became spare parts, a rare few came out slightly sharper, and nothing useful has been learned.

Oddly, minor automatons form real communities, helping one another and constantly trading news, so they know more about their area than any other machines. That is their only edge against the scrap pile. With no orders about outsiders, they will talk to adventurers if it does not slow their work. They do not eat or drink, and their mining removes stone in an orderly, nondestructive way.

A ring of Corvane grants mental contact with and command of any of his automatons, ferragans, scaladar, silversanns and thanatars, within 100 feet, and any automaton that touches the wearer shuts down for 1d12 turns. Machines under the master ring are exempt. That ring overrides other wearers' orders from up to 500 feet, temporarily locks out all other commands and cancels the lesser rings' shutdown effect. Corvane has used it to kill many rivals and hated former apprentices, letting them grow overconfident before turning their own automatons on them.