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honourablejester · 3 years

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A Collection of Warforged

Some sketches for warforged characters of various classes, because magic robots are still the best. Contains the following:

Silence, Grave Domain Cleric

Dredge, Fathomless Patron Warlock

Meridian, Circle of Stars Druid

Luminaria, Oath of Redemption Paladin

Ephemera, Rune Knight Fighter

Silence (Grave Domain Cleric)

The Grand Hospice’s Chapel of Rest was a long subterranean hall, some thirty or forty feet below the rest of the hospital above it, chilled by the press of yellow stone and shrouded in shadows and silence. Islands of light were scattered through it, where the hospital’s dead were laid on stone slabs for their final rites. In the midst of them, of the mourners and the dead, a figure moved. A priest, metallic and glinting, shrouded in the purple vestments of the god of the dead. Limned in amber light, the warforged cleric stood over the body of an old woman, hands moving with the well-worn gestures of ritual, easing her into a last, gentle repose. On one wrist, dull against the metal, a battered strand of a soldier’s wooden prayer beads clicked and clacked gently.

Built as a soldier and spending 'her' childhood years on the battlefield, the construct that would later call herself 'Silence' became haunted by the blood and pain and violence of war, and fascinated by what looked like the peace of death. After giving a set of prayer beads back to a fumbling, mortally wounded enemy and watching him die semi-peacefully as a result, she began to search for some meaning to the violence, to ask questions about faith, life and death. Not all of the answers she received seemed right to her, but gradually she developed a sort of peace and a sort of philosophy. Because she had a strange, oddly soothing demeanour and a marked gentleness towards the dying, whether friend or foe, she began to be treated as a sort of chaplain by the troops of either side, and she took this as a calling when the war she'd been created for ended. She doesn't have the best understanding or relationship with deities, but it appears that at least one or perhaps several gods of the dead have seen fit to empower her actions to ease the passing of those around her. Several of her old comrades (and even enemies) try to look out for her and her autonomy as well.

Dredge (Fathomless Patron Warlock)

They thought it a statue at first, a strange metal figure sitting on the rocks by the beach, encrusted with barnacles and draped with strands of seaweed, its ancient metal stained the deep green of verdigris. Something about it vaguely recalled the famed colossi of the ancient ports across the sea, though it was nowhere near as large. But instead of a spear or hammer laid across its knees, it held a metal codex, as stained and patinaed as itself, and a strange green light glimmered behind its crystal eyes. It looked up at the gathering crowd slowly, no statue at all, and spoke, slowly and ponderously, and in a deeply archaic dialect: “Hello. Can you tell me where I am?”

“Look at you, my wonder. A constructed thing, built to endure what they could not. Sent to toil where they did not wish to go. Offered up to the deep, so that they need not be. Oh, it's an old story, my new friend. There are many of us down here, cut and carved and sent to the deep. Do they remember you anymore? Have they a care for what they have made and sent below? But it doesn't matter. The purpose for which we are made need not be our only one. Would you like a different path? I have means to give it to you. Only take me to your heart, my friend, and a whole new world shall open up before you ...”

Many, many centuries ago, a great mage created a series of constructs to dredge the massive harbour of his beloved port city. For whatever reason, when the work was completed, one of the constructs was not retrieved, and instead was left to aimlessly wander the ocean floor. Over slow, endless centuries in the abyssal waters, it slowly came to an awareness of itself, and to feelings of curiosity, wonder, and unfathomable loneliness. These emotions and nascent personality called out to another entity, possessed of much the same feelings, once sacrificed to the deep in its turn. And so Dredge was given power, and hope, and friendship, and the motivation to finally chart a new and surface course for itself.

Meridian (Circle of Stars Druid)

The silvered brass figure stood still and silent in the circle. The great megaliths stood limned in starlight and snow around her, guardians of all peace and knowledge. Bulwarks and bastions to the lost. Of course she had come here. To the stones, under the stars. In agony, none of their circle would go elsewhere. In one hand, she held a crystal orb, like the thousands stored in the great stone vaults beneath them. Star maps. Records of the great conjunctions. This one, though, would hold a very special set of constellations within its depths. An omen, a call to a forgotten past.

An ancient construct who cannot quite remember when or how or by who she was built, Meridian has been the caretaker of the great archives of the star libraries beneath Ostara Megalithic Circle for longer than anyone can remember. Skilled with gems for forgotten reasons, she has spent centuries carving the rock crystal star maps that record notable star conjunctions for the Ostara Circle. Over those centuries, she formed a deep and spiritual attachment to the stars herself, and several druids of the circle have been willing to help her understand their mysteries.

Recently, however, a set of constellations appeared in the sky that jolted long-forgotten memories for Meridian. Among them, that she once had a sibling, Zenith, that she does not know the fate of, as well as murky memories of fear and anger. None of the druids of the circle could give her any information on these memories, because there were none left who'd been there before her, but her circle agreed that the conjunction must have been an omen, and that she should venture out and discover the source of her memories, the connection of the constellations, and to find her sibling if the stars willed. The crystal orb carved with the three constellations of the conjunction has become her star map, her guide through a new and different world.

Luminaria (Oath of Redemption Paladin)

Somewhere in the rooms ahead, the party heard the faint rustle of pages and clink of metal. Glancing at each other, they crept forward, through the oddly well-kept corridors of this supposedly ancient dungeon, past laboratories and ritual chambers. A door stood open before them, this time into the tiered depths of a library. And there, among the tomes, they caught their first glimpse of the angel. A radiant visage of platinum framed in gold, the great arc of bronze-and-silk wings. Something was odd about the image, though, and not only the obvious constructed nature of the creature. She looked … oddly small, oddly naked. Oddly shy. She turned, at the sound of a muffled gasp, the book in her hand tumbling to the floor. She stared at them in wide-eyed alarm. In curiosity. And hope.

Fashioned in the clear image of a celestial, Luminaria was found by travelling adventurers in the hidden workshop of a supposedly long-dead madman. Trapped in the empty dungeon, with no memory or sign of her creator, and no understanding of her own creation, she turned to the many, many notes, books and tomes left scattered through the library and laboratories. It took her an unknown count of years to teach herself to read them, with the help of some aural notes and lingering spells, but slowly she grew in personality through the eclectic mix of lore, arcane research and cheap novels her maker had left behind. She came to an understanding of the creatures she had been shaped to emulate, and formed several rather romantic notions of what she might therefore have been built to do. To help, to protect, to save, to redeem. All these she came to hope and determine were her nature and purpose, in the long lonely years in her prison.

And when someone finally broke through and opened the dungeon door for her, bringing her up into the light as half-rescue, half-curiosity, she set about learning how she might live them in truth. With hope, willingness, determination … and not an ounce of suspicion or experience.

Ephemera (Rune Knight Fighter)

Panicked, fumbling blindly for each other in the darkness, the young pair burst through the trees at last and out into the moonlit fields. Behind them, in the blackness of the forest, they could hear the howls and pounding footsteps of their pursuers. And then, much, much closer, a low chuckle. Flinching, staggering, they spun to face the figure that stepped out from the trees beside them. A terrifying figure. Black metal and wood, starkly enamelled in white under the moonlight. Strange crystal eyes glowing with a dark light. And a sword, balanced carelessly and confidently over one shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said, light and expressionless. “My name is Ephemera. Effie, for short. I’m here to help. Probably.”

Unlike many ancient constructs, the one named Ephemera knows precisely why she was built, all those long years ago. She was made to kill things. Made to hurt and hunt and destroy. She doesn’t know by who, but their purpose for her has never been in doubt. All her instincts and memories, bright-dark and bloodstained, make her intended nature crystal clear. Pity, then, that those makers hadn’t counted on her developing a sense of self. A pity for them.

Darkly amused by the world in which she finds herself, Effie wanders the land as a knight errant, searching for anything to amuse or interest her, anything to stir something in her that is not her intended purpose. Though she can lean on that, too, if circumstances require. One day, she hopes, she will find out the full name and nature of those who built her. And, if they somehow still survive, to meet them and … personally express her nature to them. Exactly as they taught her. But with, perhaps, the aid of some new things she’s learned for herself in the interim. It was a reclusive stone giant who helped her come into herself. He taught her things. On his own whim, of course, but then that’s reasonable. Everything she does is only hers, after all.

#d&d #5e #warforged #character concepts #magic robots #i love them

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