Kael Morandu [Mechanical Golem]

Of all the wretched survivors of the dread realm's mad experimenters, none is sadder than Kael Morandu, once a ranger and far-traveled explorer. Before, he was a sturdy man standing about 5 feet 7 inches, with weathered earth-brown skin, coffee-dark hair, mint-green eyes, and a smile and charm said to win over beasts and a thousand sweethearts in a hundred lands.

Now his spirit lives in a mechanical golem built by the deranged wizard Vosk the Mad. The body is a bit over seven feet tall and loosely human: stilt-like, birdish legs, long apelike arms ending in three-fingered grippers with retractable razors, a cylindrical torso, and a head shaped much like a human skull. Slender as it looks, its metal outstrips any known alloy. Kael cannot speak, though magical, clerical or psionic means may reach him. He understands the common tongue of his home world, the language of a mountainous neighboring land, the speech of the warped domain he now haunts, and a few words of the wandering fortune-tellers' tongue.

He avoids people and nothing in his forest preys on him, so he rarely fights, but Vosk built him to kill. Like the dread realm's other mechanical golems, he can be harmed only by weapons of +2 or better and is immune to life-affecting magic such as hold person, as well as poison and disease. Unlike most golems, he can be charmed and otherwise affected by mind magic like any man. Dispel magic stuns him for one turn per caster level, and he seems dead until then, though detect magic shows an aura growing stronger as he recharges.

His finger razors strike once per round for 4d10. A natural 20 with them also sends a surge of current through the victim: 6d6 extra damage, halved with a save vs. spell, plus a save vs. paralyzation to avoid 2d4 rounds of crippling spasms. Anyone who rolls a natural 20 against him with a metal melee weapon suffers that same shock through the weapon, with the same saves, though the attacker's own damage still lands.

Every third round he can wreathe himself in a lightning field. Each living creature within 20 feet that round takes 3d6, halved by a save vs. breath weapon, with no spasm check; exposed items of anyone who fails must save vs. lightning or be destroyed.

Most of his ranger abilities are gone, but he kept the priestly spells he had memorized when transformed and can cast warp wood, entangle and pass without trace once each per day as a 3rd-level caster.

Animals detest him. None will come within 50 feet unless trained and restrained or calmed, and even a loyal dog or warhorse refuses to come within 20 feet; forced closer, it fights savagely to get away.

Born in a great free city, Kael fled to the forest as a child and grew up among its beasts. Years later a stranger built a manor in his woods behind poison-thorned vines and fouled the land around it. Kael stormed the house, was driven out by its deadly traps, and was swallowed by an unnatural fog that carried him into a gloomy forested domain of the misty dread realm.

Wandering in search of home, he fell in love with Liska, a girl of the wandering fortune-tellers, and chased her departing clan into a fog bank, only to emerge alone in the warped domain. There he saw the same manor atop the great river cliffs and learned it was Vosk's. Unable to rouse the locals against their lord, he roamed the wilds among plants and beasts twisted by Vosk's work, broken ones, and half-mechanical survivors whom he mercifully killed.

After two days climbing the caves beneath the cliffs, Kael was gassed by a trap in Vosk's laboratory and woke strapped beneath two lightning-spewing metal spheres. Vosk, a small, ferret-eyed man, had at last found a subject hardy enough for his experiment on the soul and poured Kael's spirit into a waiting metal body, calling it a gift of immortality. Kael burst his chains, but the wizard vanished in smoke, so Kael burned the laboratory and fled to the forest.

Vosk has since rebuilt. Kael needs no food, drink or sleep and lives in a cave hidden behind the waterfall where the river spills off the cliffs. He spends his days hunting down the wizard's creations and ending their suffering swiftly. The cruelest part of his fate is that the animals he loved as much as Liska now flee from him, and he can no longer smell the flowers.