Mist Golem [Ravenloft]

A mist golem is a twelve-foot human figure of curling vapor and rolling steam held together by magic, often bearing the face of the man or woman who made it. Inside fog it is almost invisible, though it can show itself plainly when it chooses. It never speaks, but it can give a grieving howl that carries up to a mile.

In fog or mist it gains surprise easily, imposing a -2 penalty on its victims' surprise rolls. Its howl is often the first sign of its presence, and everyone within 50 feet who hears it must make a fear check.

It strikes with two fists for 3d6 each, and against structures those blows count as battering rams under the demolition rules. On a natural 20 it floods the target with its essence. If that blow's damage would kill, the victim's body melts into vapor and drifts away, actually becoming a wandering mist horror. Raising or resurrecting the victim fails unless that new form is found and somehow captured. If the blow does not kill, the victim becomes a faint, ghostly image of fog for ten rounds and can take no action. While any such victim exists, wounds dealt to the golem pass to that person instead, plainly visible to onlookers. The misty victim can be harmed only by +2 or better weapons, and dying in this state also means becoming a mist horror.

At will the golem can wrap itself in a magical cloud about 15 feet across with one of ten effects, each usable once per day, so up to ten clouds daily, all different. If surprised it releases one by instinct, the DM rolling 1d10 for its effect. Victims get their usual saves and checks but at -4 because of its power, and must check again on every exposure regardless of past ones.

Its body ignores most barriers. It cannot truly fly, but it seeps through the tiniest gaps, and being nearly weightless it never sets off pressure plates or tripwires.

Weapons below +2 pass harmlessly through it, merely stirring its swirls. It is immune to mind- and life-affecting spells, gust of wind cannot scatter it, and fire, cold and similar natural or magical forces do it no harm. Even dispel magic, so lethal to other magical automatons, fails. Spells aimed at it, such as magic missile or lightning bolt, deal no damage; if it is wounded, it instead heals 1 hit point per 2 points the spell would have dealt, so a 14-point fireball restores 7.

When pressed hard it can slip away into the mists. It must spend one round doing nothing else, during which attacks on it gain +2, and the next round it ripples out of existence, leaving only a fog bank that fades over the following hour.

Only a few have ever existed. They are solitary and most drift through the endless mists of the dread realm, shunning the living. They are usually met only by fools who hunt them or try to control them, though now and then one strays into a domain or island and lays waste to it before the mists take it again.

Like the wandering fortune-tellers, mist golems travel the mists effortlessly. One that escapes into them can reappear anywhere in the realm after a short walk of exactly 99 steps, however far the destination; with no destination, it can wander the mist horrors' ethereal domain forever.

Each creation also produces a focus. As the body meant to house the spirit fades away, a nearby object becomes the lens that channels the mists' power into the new creature. Every known focus was within 50 feet of both golem and maker, worth at least about 10,000 gp, weighed no more than 5 pounds and usually under half that, and lay in direct moonlight, so mist golems are always born on clear, dead-of-night hours.

Whoever holds the focus can order the golem to perform five tasks. While the master carries it in hand, as an amulet or otherwise on his person, the golem cannot harm him and must obey to the letter, but it twists the meaning: the first order is fulfilled as intended, each later one more warped. After the fifth task the focus vanishes into the mists to reappear elsewhere in the realm, and the golem fixates on destroying its former master.

No one makes a mist golem on purpose. The first, and probably every one since, appeared when an ancient sage tried to animate an ordinary golem by drawing directly on the mists, sensing that some strange power bound the land without understanding it. Hasty, misguided builders keep repeating his mistake. The result always lusts for death, first craving the destruction of whoever tried to control it, then rampaging endlessly against anyone it meets. Masters who hold its focus enjoy only brief command, which always ends in their deaths.