Garbage Golem

A garbage golem is a rough human shape of decaying rubbish with no face at all. It can also abandon that form and slump into a shapeless heap that looks like any of the countless trash piles littering the plague-city domain where it dwells. Like most golems it has no mind, yet it is always evil even when its master is not directing it, and as far as a construct can enjoy anything, it enjoys ruining the land.

It fights in the simplest way. Told to attack, it keeps advancing until it is destroyed; told to guard, it holds its ground and assaults anyone who comes near. From its rubbish-heap form it can rise and strike in the same round, gaining surprise.

Each fist deals 1d8 and forces a save vs. poison. On a failure the victim contracts a deadly sickness of agonizing cramps that seize random muscles and sap one Constitution point each day, killing the victim at 0. A day spent doing nothing but resting quietly prevents that day's loss, but even slight physical exertion lets the disease advance. Cure disease ends it, though the cure works slowly and leaves the patient bedridden for two days.

Only +1 or better magical weapons can hit it. Fire magic deals full damage, and no other spell affects it. Ordinary fire deals half, and a nonmagical weapon that has been heated can strike it for half damage too.

As long as it touches garbage, which is nearly always the case in its home, it heals 1 hit point every round, fire damage included. Ending it for good means reducing it to -10 hit points and then burning it. Between 0 and -10 it is merely disabled, and it will regenerate fully once it is back among plenty of refuse. On destruction the golem bursts and showers its attackers with filth that has a 10% chance of carrying rot grubs.

Its master can take control of any of them whenever he likes, so at times the mindless golem suddenly acts with great intelligence and carries out elaborate plans, an unpleasant shock for anyone fighting it.

Nothing grows where it has walked unless the ground is cleaned afterward, which no one in its domain bothers to do.

Only ten garbage golems exist. A wizard built them all at the request of Vesperon Rake, the lord of the plague-city, who wanted bodyguards that could also carry his 'gift' of blight into whatever untouched land his domain still held. Every one obeys him and will never harm him. He sees through their eyes and can steer any of them as if he were inside its body, so he keeps them spread across his territory to watch over it. If he is attacked, all of them rush to defend him. They share his curse and cannot leave his domain, which frustrates his wish to spread his blight beyond its borders.

Garbage golems are unnatural and actively poison the environment around them. Druids cannot abide them, though few druids ever pass through the plague-city. The wizard who built them was murdered soon after, and no one has tried to repeat his work.