Furnace Golem

This is a specialized iron golem weighing 6,000 pounds that otherwise looks just like its more common relative. Its jaws are hinged and work as it talks, revealing a fiery glow inside, and its eyes shine a dull red as though heated from within. It is warm to the touch but has no smell. Its heavy tread can crack floors and rattle entire buildings unless they stand on thick rock foundations. It is built unarmed, though anything giant-sized it can grip may serve it as a weapon.

Unlike most golems it is intelligent. It speaks in a slow, deliberate, booming monotone with no inflection whatsoever.

Its mind makes it a more flexible fighter than an iron golem. It may grab any big, sturdy object, from a giant's axe to a tree trunk, and swing it with normal initiative, dealing three times the damage a human would deal with a comparable man-sized weapon plus +12 for its storm giant strength. A punch deals 2d6+12. It can heave boulders and similar missiles up to 300 yards for 3d10 each, but it manages to catch thrown rocks only 10% of the time.

It can also seize a foe of man size or smaller and squeeze, inflicting 6d6 per round; once the first attack lands, no more rolls are needed. Crushing one foe uses up its round, so it cannot also fight someone else, but it can pin one victim to keep them from escaping while fighting with its free hand, or grab a second victim and crush both at once. It lets go once its victims stop struggling and look dead.

Thanks to its bulk and power it can smash walls, fences, carts, furniture and buildings, each punch counting as a +1 battering ram against structures. Gripping an object and tearing or crushing it is just as effective. Always weigh its mass and strength when it lifts, throws, resists or breaks something.

Only weapons of +3 or better can harm it. Magical cold slows it for three rounds, magical fire repairs 2 points of damage per die the attack would have dealt, and every other spell is useless. A rust monster's touch does affect it. When a furnace golem is finally destroyed, the enchanted molten iron inside spills out into a pool 60 feet across that deals 10 damage per round to everyone in it and lasts 1d4+4 turns.

A furnace golem is driven by a powerful, intelligent spirit its maker summoned and bound into the iron. It has no society or home of its own and exists to serve. Its creator can talk with it about what it has recently seen and heard, those being its only two senses, and it can even offer modest guesses about events it knows of. These chats are dull and unimaginative, but the golem is always logical and never lies. It may talk with strangers too, which does not stop it from attacking them if that seems called for. It can handle fairly involved instructions, as well as a bright and willing human servant could, and it never turns on its master.

Its strangest gift is the ability to propel itself through space like a starhelm by feeding magical items into its mouth, where its molten core destroys them. Each 1,000 XP of item value consumed powers one week of such travel, as a 1/10-ton craft with SR 2 and MC B. It eats only one item at a time, which removes any risk of the internal blast that might wreck an ordinary furnace. A human it carries into the void between worlds has air for 2d6+7 days because of the golem's size. Furnace golems never leave their home crystal shell: if one enters the flame-sea, it explodes in a 300-foot-radius fireball dealing 36d6 to everything in range.

Furnace golems have no role in any living ecosystem, and they neither eat food nor sleep.