Golem II [Mystara]

These are constructs, powerful magical beings shaped and given motion by high-level wizards or priests, here from iron and from mud. Like all such creations, they need no food or rest and fill no niche in nature.

Apart from its 12-foot height, an iron gargoyle looks much like an ordinary gargoyle, but its rough hide is armored in iron scales bristling with iron spikes. Its red eyes glint with malice, and in dim light small flames can be seen flickering at the corners of its grinning mouth. Under infravision it glows bright with the heat stored in its massive body.

No form of fire affects it, but cold deals double damage. Otherwise it is immune to spells and can be harmed only by weapons of +2 or better. Invisible things within 60 feet are revealed to it by detect invisibility.

It flies clumsily but likes to open a fight from above, plunging down to crush a foe beneath its weight. The target may save vs. death to dodge; on a failure it takes 3d10 damage and is stunned and helpless for 1d3 rounds. In melee it uses two claws (1d8 each), a horn (2d8) and a whipping tail (1d10). A creature struck by the tail must save vs. paralyzation or reel, stunned, for 1d3 rounds. Every third round it can breathe a fiery cone, 10 feet wide and 30 feet long, for 3d10, halved by a save vs. dragon breath.

Most are built and found in pairs, though a lone iron gargoyle may guard a less important site. Building one takes five months and 125,000 gp, and the maker must be a wizard of at least 18th level, casting fireball, fly, geas, polymorph any object and wish.

A mud golem is a 6-foot figure of dark mud shaped like a brawny human warrior. Its face is almost blank: no mouth, just two dim, faintly shining hollows where eyes should be. It reeks like swamp gas.

Quicksand and mud bear its weight as if solid, or lie submerged in them indefinitely and surface whenever it likes, and its maker usually stations it where it can ambush from such cover. It attacks by wrapping its arms around a victim in a ghastly, suffocating embrace. A hit deals 2d6 and the golem holds on, dealing 2d6 smothering damage every round after. The victim gets no save against the first hit, but in each later round a save vs. paralyzation halves the smothering damage. It does not usually let go of a living victim, though some adventurers swear they escaped by playing dead until the dim-witted thing dropped them.

Normal and magical weapons both hurt it, but blunt weapons deal only half damage. Transmute mud to rock slows it, as the slow spell, for 2d4 rounds; no other spell affects it.

Mud golems can live anywhere, but priests generally make them to guard treasures and buildings in swamps, jungles and similarly wet, muddy places. A priest of 11th level or higher can build one in a month with 100 gp of materials, using animate object, quest, raise dead, slow and transmute rock to mud.