DrewDad--
The soft dolls are poppets.
I've got manic kin, but they're all made of pumpkin pulp.
Quote:In Jewish folklore, a golem (גולם, sometimes, as in Yiddish, pronounced goilem) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means 'cocoon', but can also mean "fool", "silly", or even "stupid". The name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means "raw material".
Quote:...appears occasionally in the folklore of Eastern Europe as a construct made from natural materials such as dirt, roots, insects, feces, and other substances. In these stories the creature is revived through incantation and acts as a vehicle for the astrally projected mind of a sorcerer.
Quote:The golem concept has found its way into a wide variety of books, comic books, films, television shows, and games. This use covers a wide range, from "golem" used as an umbrella term to refer to automata and simulacra made of anything from steel to flesh, via clay monsters called golems, to full adoptions of the golem mythos.
The Golem, 1987
Papier-mache made from newspaper, glue, and metal frame and metal
From performance, "Destruction and Detroit II" 1987, Berlin
Harvest golem
The Golem was approximately seven feet tall and carved out of stone.
Quote:Jehuda was chief Rabbi of Prague (from 1597), famous leader, talmudist, moralist, theologian, mathematician, philosopher, teacher and mystic. According to legend, he created a GOLEM at the Altneuschul Synagogue in Prague to serve the Jewish community. From out of dust
There have been many stories of Golems...as it is a completely fictitious creature, I see no way to distinguish some of them are "right" and others as "wrong." The very first golem story was clay...but the meaning of the word is defined by the culture, and every story is influenced by other stories before it...
Adamantine Golem
Bone Golem
Steel golem and flesh golem
Iron golem
Stuh--
I'm impressed with your research.
Still, your divergent examples are inspired by folklore rather than representing folklore.
By the by, anyone who has dabbled in pottery knows the difficulty of working and baking even small dishes with impure clay. A life sized servant of impure clay would never make it out of the kiln in one piece.
Sheesh . . . no one in their right mind "bakes" a clay golem. They are dangerous because missile weapons (bows and slings) can't harm them, and blade weapon (swords, spears, halberds) can't harm them. They can only be defeated by slugging it out with them with battle hammers or maces.
What kind of idiot would bake a clay golem and lose all those advantages?
OK, OK . . . i didn't want to blow my own horn, and surely don't want to be subjected to the female ego attack the way it happened in the dragon thread--but i have a lot of experience with golems. I've killed hundreds--perhaps even dozens--of golems.
Clay golems are tough because, as mentioned above, piercing weapons don't affect them, and you have to get in close with blunt intruments. That being said, they are the smallest, the slowest and the least dangerous of golems.
Stone golems can be effectively attacked with any hand weapon, but missile weapons are almost useless (unless powerfully enchanted), and they can take a lot of damage. But they are doable, and you can probably get your people out alive.
Adamantine, iron and steel golems are the worst. Not only can they withstand terrific damage, but they can dish out crushing blows, which can kill an unwary adventurer with a single blow. The Adamantine golems are particularly dangerous because they can generate a noxious, acidic gas cloud. The main way to deal with the behemoths is with magic attacks. Your fighters need to dart in and out, distracting and wounding the golems, while your magic users put all the power they can in spells which will "dispel" them and unhinge their joints. These jokers are often harder to kill than dragons, which are, in the end, flesh-and-blood creatures.
Crystal golems are all show. They can daunt the inexperienced because of their illusionist powers, and the ability to blind their attackers. But in the end, they shatter easily, and are vulnerable to almost any weapon, including arrows and sling bullets. They are the only golems, however, which can move fast.
On the whole, golems are nasty critters, but since they are usually slow (except the crystal golems), and are always essentially stupid, they can be dealt with. Also, because they are slow and stupid, it is often possible to just get around them without fighting.
Setanta--
Your trophy room must be a Hall of Wonder.
I assume you do your own dusting? Or have you impressed a golem with housekeeping talent?
The sewage and garbage golem is responsible for that.
By the way, that's how we got out of the Irenicus dungeon. He was off fighting the Shadow Thieves, and Imoen picked the locks and got us out of our cells. We found the activation stone for the sewage golem, and then just followed him around as he unlocked all the doors and emptied the privies. We had some fighting to do, but nothing we couldn't handle.
here's a scary one... children and the faint of heart please leave the room....
Noddy24 wrote:
Still, your divergent examples are inspired by folklore rather than representing folklore.
Folk lore is constantly growing and changing. The original concept of a golem was from earth/mud/dust, but this has inspired people since then to invent many more fantastic types of golems in their own new stories...and this becomes part of history, too. You can't draw a line in time and say "only the stories before 1975 should be counted"...history knows of no such line.
Quote:A life sized servant of impure clay would never make it out of the kiln in one piece.
That's because they are held together by an imaginary magical force that also animates them. And the clay golems are not made from hardened clay, it is the still wet mud kind of clay
I must remember to cover the furniture if a golem's coming over.
And, on a related note, what sort of beer do they like? I'm thinking Mississippi mud might be to their liking.
