Fossil Golem

It’s a golem with two tyrannosaurus skulls for hands.  That can petrify you.  (Nay—that can fossilize you!)  I’m going to assume that’s really all you need to know.

The wizards of the Brown Cowl hide in plain sight as paleontologists for Ambrose University.  Since everyone takes it for granted that they are bone-stealing necromancers, the cabal finds it easy to hide the fact that they are actually relic-stealing transmuters.  Their efforts have actually yielded the museum a remarkable collection of dinosaur skeletons that have become quite a tourist draw.  The as-yet-to-be-cataloged pile of leftover bones in the Special Collections Wing is actually a fossil golem that guards the Brown Cowl’s laboratories and smuggling operation.

Half the trouble with creating a fossil golem is finding the right bones.  But in their subterranean travels the foul urdefhans cross countless strata pocked with fossils.  The resulting golems make good guards, and urdefhans find their petrification power a particularly pleasing and slow way to spread death.

In the cactus-filled badlands, it’s hard to tell who competes more fiercely—the ranchers, rangers, and gunslingers who roam the mesas, or the dueling miners, spellslingers (Ultimate Combat 74–75), and deep earth bloodline sorcerers (Advanced Player’s Guide 137) who battle over riches under the earth.  Outgunned (literally) by the miners and wizards, the sorcerers even the odds with fearsome fossil golems and earthshaking spells.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 136

I’m between campaigns at the moment (and here I’ll pause to wish my GM’s new store, Gorilla King Comics, lots of luck so we can start playing again).  So it’s hard for me to evaluate the fossil golem, because I think the experience largely depends on which side of the gaming table you’re on.  I’m already on record as being against golem bloat, and speaking purely as a reader, I’m not going to lie—the fossil golem makes me go, “Um…seriously?”  But if I was facing one across the table, and my GM said, “Those two T. rex skulls you see?  Those are its hands…” I probably would have been pretty impressed.

Speaking of Wild West fossil hunting, my grad school roommate used to live in Edward Drinker Cope’s house in Philly.  How awesome is that?!