Iron Golem

A titan of pure iron and magic, the Iron Golem packs a wicked punch (and halitosis to boot). I love golems and constructs of all kinds. If you haven't gathered that yet, you will.

I'm conflicted when it comes to the use of golems, though. On the one hand, I love surprising players with these mindless guardians (also I just love them a lot in general okay).

On the other hand, they're immune to an awful lot. Their vulnerabilities always seem to be something seldom available. In the case of the iron golem, being able to deactivate its breath weapon for 1 minute (basically the entire fight) is huge! However, that vulnerability is tied to neutralize poison, which I've never had anyone prepare or learn. It's also vulnerable to rust, which, outside of waving a rust monster antenna at it or having a primal caster for rusting grasp, isn't easy to accomplish RAW.

These are by no means reasons to not use the iron golem. It's the perfect monster to complement a mad wizard, a secret laboratory, or a ruin lost since the Iron Age. A merchant selling scrolls of neutralize poison outside of an iron golem's locale would be interesting if the party was too low of a level to properly fight it. Disable its breath weapon and run! It's not very fast, I'm sure your party can probably make it!

I mean, come on, it's a golem! You should use it in any instance that you can. Lucky for you, you've come to Beastfinder, and providing instances to use monsters is exactly what we do.

-TJ

Hook 1 (Max) - Iron Maiden

The small mining town of Coalsmine has been seeing a lot of commerce and travelers in the last couple of years. The reason? A discovery their workers made underground that has been since maintained by the local wizard, an ancient construct of considerable power.

"Come test your mettle against Iron Maiden!" all sorts of mercenaries and vagabonds are urged. The townsfolk, being clever as they are, charge a hefty sum for everyone who passes through that wants to try their hand in single combat against the golem. This has worked out surprisingly well for the people of Coalsmine, as they've seen a great upturn in their profits. Not many combatants manage to win and if they do, repairing the contraption proves an easy matter.

Rules of the challenge are simple—one combatant at a time, no single-use items, the one who manages to walk off the arena wins. The possibility of death is high and the town does not cover any recovery costs.

The arena is quite big for one-on-one combat, approximately one hundred by one hundred feet, laden with sand and barren. Once the challenger enters it, comes forth the Iron Maiden. One could mistakenly take her for a normal golem, though that would be a great miscalculation, as with each failure she had been modified and upgraded to become the ultimate killing machine beyond her original capabilities.

Hook 2 (TJ) - Haywire Handlers

The smog of the smokebelchers is getting to be a real problem. Each of the Utheni guilds has suggested various solutions to said problem. The air-purifying automatons wandering the streets of Dren are a pet project of the Golemancers Guild; this doubles as their bid to solve the smog problem and as their submission to the Contest of the Steel Kings. If this iron golem schematic is approved for entry and subsequently wins the contest, the election of the Golemancers Guild to the Forgeseat will mark the first time in 74 cycles that a fledgling guild has succeeded.

The Machinists Guild does not recognize the Golemancers Guild as an independent entity. While their reasoning is not official, the general consensus is that—considering the Golemancers are an offshoot of the Machinists—the Machinists tentatively have the rights to Golemancer developments. When one of the iron golems goes haywire and begins spewing the toxins back into the Dren atmosphere, Jarmek Shattermace, the current Forgeseat, doesn't care whom the golem belongs to, he just wants it stopped. The ramifications for the Golemancers' Forgeseat application will have to wait.

Hook 3 (Reece) - To Sink or Swim

A new piece of dwarven technology has proven particularly deadly in the conflict between the Relendish Isles and The Grand Tyranny. So far, only one ship of its kind has been fielded, and it was a genuine terror during the fight at sea.

The dwarves are particularly recalcitrant when it comes to sharing the secrets of their forging techniques, so no one really understands how exactly they got it to work, though it has most assuredly been their finest contribution to the war effort, at least since the advent of cannons.

The warship—known simply as The Iron Lady—is a floating monstrosity of iron, bristling with cannons and twice the size of any normal galleon. The hull of the thing was so impenetrable that The Tyranny had only one choice—boarding.

Unfortunately for those involved, this was their greatest error. The forecastle of The Iron Lady is ostentatiously adorned with the iron reliefs of two dwarven women, or so the Tyrannymen thought. Upon boarding the ship the two statues lept to life, tearing through the boarding party before pulling down the boarding ship's mast using massive rune-laden chains. Now, each ship that attempts to board the unbreakable hulk is rebuffed and similarly struck down. One report notes that a ship was entirely overturned in the water, killing everyone on board.

The Tyranny has a plan, though, to destroy the weapon before it turns the tide of the war.

Why try to destroy the golems, when you can simply shove them overboard where they will sink into the deepest depths of the ocean?

Flesh Golem

Ah, the flesh golem. A classic horror monster used by crazed scientists and necromancers the multiverse over. The stat block notably contains hefty golem resistances. Having a good grasp on what golems are immune to goes a long way in helping them feel imposing and unstoppable. The Flesh Golem (like other golems) is mindless and neutral. Subvert expectations of this quintessential creature by having a benign master, or even giving it a basic level of intelligence. Crowds of townspeople are likely to take offense at its unnatural visage, which could serve a myriad of uses. Serving perhaps as a morbid reminder of their mortality and a perversion of their existence, the Flesh Golem can lend itself as a centerpiece to social encounters as well. When tensions escalate and townspeople try and drive this amalgam of magic and flesh out of town, however, they run the risk of activating its Berserk ability; proving they were right about its nature all along.

Hook 1 (TJ) - The Trawler
Leeside is one of the most prosperous fishing towns in the region, largely thanks to one man, known colloquially as "The Trawler." Very little is known about him, other than that he exclusively takes his boat out by himself at night. Each morning he returns with record-breaking hauls of fish in addition to other more strange and exotic varieties of seafood. Any fishmonger that starts to ask too many questions misses out on doing business with the Trawler as punishment. If only the locals knew the truth. If they ever caught a glimpse of the mer-flesh monstrosities swimming below the surface, dragging the nets between them...

Hook 2 (Reece) - A New "Friend"
The local smith's daughter Teirdre is often found playing on the outskirts of Adarlin, a tiny village of less than one-hundred people. It has long been known that her family has had some level of sorcerous talent that many in the town have been eagerly awaiting to see manifest. One hero from every generation, the town is fond of saying.

As she nears her tenth name day, Teirdre has been speaking of "The Man in the Caves" that she has "play dates" with. As she persists with the tale, her father has become worried that some nefarious entity could be praying on her.

To the surprise of both the village and Teirdre herself, she has unwittingly taken control of a Flesh Golem that was intended to steal her away to The Cult of Melting Flesh. Her new "Friend" is the first sign of the cult's activities near the town, and it may be the only clue as to how to stop them.

Hook 3 (Nemanja) - Birthright: Prometheus
The shores of Alba Endura, the island retreat for the richest men on Earth, are protected by a nameless legion of Flesh golems crafted from the bodies of the very laymen who built the high-tech facilities on the secret island. While the golems are taken for granted and treated as mindless, recent whispers talk of a golem who has developed a cunning and forceful personality.

As the stories go, the Golem - calling himself Prometheus - will give other golems little bites of his own brain matter, after which they also display signs of having a personality and mind of their own, albeit for a very limited time. For now, his motives remain entirely unclear.

Clay golem

Honestly, despite many generations of dungeons and dragons and its derivatives offering many different varieties, the original clay golem remains my favourite. Given its classic origins, i think classic stories of hubris and overly literal adherence to commands suit these things more than any other construct.

In the thrice-blessed city of Kragooy, almost every temple has clay golem guardians, with heads ornately carved to resemble their patron deities. In the past few weeks, there have been several instances of these faces melting off. After that, the golems, with newly featureless and perfectly smooth faces all went into a rampage, killing innocents out on the streets of the city. If the source of this vile magic isn't found soon, the city will undoubtedly go into chaos.

In an attempt to keep his village safe, a now famous wizard left a clay golem to stand guard over it. The golem was popular for a while, keeping wolves and the occasional basilisk or ankhrav at bay, but then one day, mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Several months later, he returned, carrying an enormous quantity of bottles of philosopher's brew - the famed potion of eternal life. As it turned out, the maker told his golem to "never harm or kill anyone in the village, or allow anyone to be harmed or die through inaction".
Unfortunately, the sheer amount of the extremely rare and valuable brew makes the little village a target for much greater threats than before, and the wizard and his compatriots must rush back to its aid.

On his deathbed, King Grzegorz the Greedy commanded his personal golem (crafted in his likeness) to guard his crown until a worthy heir appears. Several days later, when all the king's heirs fell, trying to wrestle the crown from the mighty construct's clay hands, the kingdom fell into disarray. Desperate to keep the peace, the remaining great lords issued a proclamation: whosoever manages to beat the golem, shall be crowned the new rightful king of Polithania.

Alchemical Golem

While by no means the toughest or meanest golem in the bestiary (its the second lowest level of the bunch, outclassing only the flesh golem), the alchemical golem might actually be the toughest one to prepare for.
With the potential to dish out six different types of damage, its nigh impossible to set up defenses against it. Fighting one should feel wild, chaotic and unpredictable, and should keep both players and player characters on their toes. The fact that while rare, these golems do become sentient, can also be used in many, many ways...

The order of the Last Light has outlawed both the technomancers and the necromancers. Banding together, they have repurposed several Alchemical Golems by filling their vials with ghoul fever and zombie rot. If the decree outlawing them isn't revoked by dawn of the next day, they threaten to release these necrotic constructs in the poorest slums of the city, killing thousands in a matter of hours. Luckily, a certain young thief has information about where the scholar controlling the golems is hiding, but getting to him wont be easy...

Bjørn Bloodsplat was an alchemist who heard the stories of alchemical golems attaining true consciousness, and tried to replicate such an occurence. His experiment went a little too well though - BB-769 not only ended up with a personality, it ended up with six of them. Depending on the balance of chemicals in its many vials, it may try to murder, negotiate with, or preach to the envoys sent to recruit it.

Lucas Longly was a dwarven merchant and dabbler in the arcane, who among other things left an alchemical golem as heirloom to his progeny. A hundred and fifty years later, Lucas's grandson Yucas is in need of such a construct. There are several complications though - the cave in which the dormant golem is located has become infested with dire bats, who could easily shatter the delicate glass dome adorning the golem. What is more, dire bats have recently been pronounced an endangered species, meaning that anyone involved in harming them would need to pay quite high a fee. The specialists on Yucas's payroll will need to get creative.

 

Adamantine golem

The biggest, meanest entry in the golem family so far, an adamantine golem is a high-tier threat. It is rare and and expensive to create, that the mere creation of one should be an event of epic proportions. Its' high CR and insanely powerful abilities make it a great choice for a campaign-ending encounter.

Fifteen years ago, king Fulchrist sold his crown to the people of Stadia, turning it into a republic, and then mysteriously disapeared. Now he's back, riding on the shoulders of an an adamantine golem, and is threatening to destroy his old capital, unless the council gifts him The Elder Sword.
However, The Elder sword is the last known vorpal sword in the nine realms - supposedly the only weapon able to bring down an adamantine golem. As betrayal and backstabbing erupts among the councilmen, it is up to the newly appointed Chamber Guard to decide the fate of the republic.

When the Burntooth tribe discovered a giant metal man in the depths of their caves, they did what any sane goblin would do - they set it on fire and then promptly ran away.
After discovering that the thing is now awake, and will not harm them as long as they keep it supplied with a steady stream of fire and explosives, the Burntooths have quickly become the leading force in the Emerald Woods. As reports of them becoming bolder and luring the golem towards dryad outposts in the woods are becoming more and more frequent, it is only a matter of time before they set their sight on the undefended elven capital of Llewyth, and the green elders are offering the breath of eternal life to anyone who can put down that technological travesty.

The march of the machines is the local name given to a weird technomagical phenomenon on the world of Dunia. Namely, from the foothills of Gryffon mount, up to the entrance to the Gilded Caverns a thousand leagues northeast, there is always a never-ending line of adamantine golems, or forgewalkers as they are locally known. The golems are docile most of the time, but any attempts to break their line or sneak into the beginning or end points of their journey are met with swift resistance. Recently, however, golems with new designs have started appearing - some sporting antlers, others with intricate engravings across their bodies, and even a rare few whose internal forges seem to be glowing with blue fire. The Shimmerhammer clan of dwarves is launching a mining expedition that will dig through to the core of the mountain to once and for all solve the mystery, and they are anyone capable and mad enough to acompany them on the journey.