Magen

Magens (said MAY-jens, from the old phrase for magical people) are constructs made by wizards of 12th level or higher through demanding conjurations and obscure alchemy. Poured from magical gel into molds, they usually look like flawless grayish-white humans, sometimes bearing a vain maker's face or bestial touches, never animal or monster shapes; artisans may paint them or add texture and hair. They feel warm and fleshlike yet are not truly alive, needing no food, sleep, air or water, with no feelings or free will.

Each starts with one language its maker chooses and can learn one or two more. It obeys its creator to destruction, and unlike most constructs follows detailed orders, learns complex tasks like an average human, and makes simple decisions by set criteria.

Demos, the commonest, serve as household staff and bodyguards. Acid-scented caldrons are rarely kept indoors. Galvans store lightning, and the frail hypnos charm and suggest, all the more dangerous because the types look alike.

Any magen can learn weapons. A demos begins with one melee and one missile weapon and can learn more; it is the only type that wears armor, using the armor's AC when better than its natural AC 7.

A caldron stretches its limbs up to 20 feet, using the legs only to reach awkward spots and the arms to grab one or two foes per round. A hit means the victim is held and takes 1d10 acid damage per round until released, which requires an open doors roll or the caldron's death; items need saves or are ruined. A galvan fires up to three lightning bolts per day, each a 5-foot-wide, 60-foot-long stroke, dealing 3d6 (half with a save vs. breath weapon). A hypnos can try charm person once per round; failing a save vs. spell makes the victim treat it as a dear friend, while a success grants permanent immunity to that hypnos. Each round it can also telepathically give one charmed victim a suggestion (save vs. spell to resist), always based on its maker's instructions.

Magens are immune to charm, fear and most emotion-affecting magic but vulnerable to hold and sleep. At 0 hit points one dissolves in an acidic burst of colored flame and smoke, leaving no trace or smell after a round. If its creator dies, a magen almost always goes mad and rampages until destroyed.

Magens have no society. Lonely wizards may teach them small talk, manners and imitated emotions, but without will they remain slaves.

Ageless and consuming nothing, they matter to their surroundings only as a destructive force. Sages think impatient wizards devised them as a cheaper, faster stand-in for golems, or as practice; weaker but smarter than golems, they can sometimes pass as human. A tale that the gods taught the art is unproven.

Creation needs a full laboratory with 1,000 gp of special tools and an electrum mold, usually made with a smith or sculptor, taking six weeks or more and 15,000 gp (10,000 gp with suitable facilities and skills). The gel takes 3,000 gp of rare ingredients, mostly available only in big cities with a wizards' guild, alchemical school or component shop, and two weeks of preparation during which the wizard can only eat, sleep and rest. Type ingredients follow: the weapons a demos must learn, a roper's or choker's tentacles for a caldron, part of a lightning-producing creature for a galvan, or a dissolved charm person scroll for a hypnos.

With the gel in the mold, the wizard swiftly casts, in order, lightning bolt, then fabricate, then transmute mud to rock, next stone to flesh, then domination, and finally lightning bolt once more, then rolls 1d20 for the result. The mold and gear survive for later batches of that same type only; switching types always fails. Each reuse requires the mold to save vs. lightning or crack during the final casting. A broken mold usually yields a deformed magen that melts away within minutes, but if the 1d20 roll succeeded there is a 5% chance of a perfect, fully self-aware magen free of its maker's control.