Gear Spirit

Despite the name, a gear spirit is no ghost but a small chunk of living, free-willed metal shaped like some common tool or device, with eyes, ears and nose placed wherever they happen to fall. Because each has its own gear and its own job, no two look alike, unlike the identical clockwork drones of the same plane. Most are named for their shape: Padlock, Axle, Chair, Ball-and-Chain.

Not much of a fighter, a gear spirit can still turn either arm into any tool or weapon, even a crossbow with endless bolts. Worse, it can merge with manufactured metal or machinery, much like meld into stone, and then command the device within its normal functions: firing a ballista, rolling a wheel over someone or unlocking a door, but never making a lamppost lash out.

Each melee hit on a foe in metal armor worsens that armor's AC value by one point (not with ranged attacks). Magical bonuses go last, Dexterity bonuses are untouched, and armor stripped of its final point is destroyed.

Mind-affecting and emotion spells fail against it, and like the clockwork drones it ignores life-draining magic. Fire, cold and acid attacks against it suffer -1 to hit, and it saves at +1 against them. Rust, though, eats it twice as fast as normal metal; spirits fear nothing more than a damp cell, unless it is a rust dragon.

Found only on the plane of perfect order, gear spirits are thought vital to keeping its gears running. The clockwork drones long ago took control of them and officially bound each to its gear, which the spirits resent; lawful though they are, they have far more personality than the drones and dislike being underlings.

Some slip away from their posts, and others simply feel the urge to roam. Even a small risk to the abandoned gear is enough for the drones to send a task force, and they keep hunting for years if need be, because no new spirit can form until the old one returns. Without the spirit's innate bond, the drones can only try to keep the gear working.

A gear spirit is tied to its gear the way a dryad is tied to her tree, but it can leave by carrying a fragment that holds the gear's essence. If that piece is lost, it weakens and perishes within a month, and a month without manufactured metal or machinery kills it too. The population has grown so much that sages now suspect several spirits share each gear's essence, rather than the old one-per-gear belief.