The Bestiary 2 refers to these golems as “walking alchemical nightmares.” Any encounter with them should play this up. Most other golems are austere clay, stone, and metal statues. Alchemical golems, in contrast, should be played as whirring, clicking, oozing, spurting, sparking, exploding, surgical tool-wielding, bomb-throwing abominations.
Alisaire (LG female half-elf rogue 2/paladin 5) and Ferges (CG male half-elf rogue 1/alchemist 6) are twins who have been each other’s only friends in a society that loathes their kind. Having found their deceased father’s lab may drive them apart, however. Ferges has become obsessed with his inheritance—an alchemical golem that occupies ever more of his attention…and which may need a new brain soon.
Away speaking at Parliament, Chem’s master insists by letter that alchemical golems have no souls or consciousness—elemental spirits animate the body, with the brain simply providing a shortcut for senses like sight and hearing. He dismisses Chem’s claim that his alchemical golem looks despondent, or that it tattoos messages for help on the lab’s rats with its terrible syringe needled-fingers.
A strange duergar foundry has gone unused for at least a decade. Unused by dwarfs that is—the bellows still pump, the blast furnace still smelts, and the elemental spirit traps still ensnare, allowing the lone alchemical golem left manning the foundry to replicate itself many times over.
—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 135
Ah, the alchemical golem. First victim of my bachelor party illness (let me clarify: my illness, not my party), finally restored.
ReplyDeleteSince this is already the second golem I’ve written about, let me go on record as saying I am not a fan of golem bloat. (Did drow really need *web* golems in 3.5? We get it—they like spiders.) Give me clay and metals, and call it done. That said, Paizo adventure writers really seem to love alchemical golems, and I can sort of see their point in a steampunky, Frankenstein-y kind of way.