D&D 5E A freely-aligned NPC race who bind their elder's souls to constructs when they die - how would you do this?

[transtemporal]

How would you go about implementing this?

I would just say "it happens because its magic". I wouldn't get bogged down in the underlying rules except to give it a flavor like "mechamancy" or "rune magic" or something similarly dwarven-flavored. Or make it a "ritual". Players let you get away with a lot if you say its a ritual.

 

[76512390ag12]

I'd get one of these out in the game early on, as a nice bit of foreshadowing. Plus, you did all that imagining work

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[Herobizkit]

In 4e D&D, there existed a race of psychic crystalline beings called Shardminds which, mechanically, sounds like your jam.

You'll have to do some mining for the info, though, as 4e is no longer supported or readily available online.

(See what I did there? ^_^)

 

[Staffan]

The idea sounds very similar to the Undying Court from Eberron.

On Eberron, the primary elven culture is centered around the Undying Court, a collective of positive energy-powered undead representing their greatest heroes. Elves are generally driven to excel in order to hopefully qualify for being turned into one of the Undying upon death - this does not necessarily mean excel as adventurers, you could also qualify by being a really good craftsman for example. The Undying Court is powered by a connection to the plane of Irian, which is sort-of the Eberron equivalent of the Positive Energy plane (but with aspects of various Celestial planes as well as the plane of Air), and this grants them collectively nigh-divine powers. Elven clerics usually draw power from the Undying Court.

This is something you could draw some inspiration from. Perhaps it's not just the monarchs that become constructs, but also other great heroes. The connection to particular minerals is sort of like the Undying Court's connection to Irian - both mean that their use would be bound to a particular region.

 

[kagayaku]

Oh wow. I knew joining this forum was a good plan, you've all given so many great ideas and references. xD I'm glad people are playing around with it too, hopefully that means it'll also capture the inaginations of my players. Or maybe they'll just go there to shop and ignore everything else, who knows. Haha.

I'll see if I can track down the sharminds and undying court lore when I get a free minute. World building is fun but I'm sure pouring a lot of time into it! I've decided the players, in an early game while I'm still railroading a little, will come accross an old wandering construct who will lament that an area that was 'recently' endless greenery is now deforested and covered in ice. This is to fireshadow an unrelated event for months down tthe road, though if he goes to investigate it the players may later find his corpse there. Beyond that meeting the rest probably wony come up for a little while so I'll save the details for then, but a ritual sounds good. I'm not too worried about increasing numbers because of wars and also that 10,000 years of adding a ruler every 150 years with none of them ever dying still only gives about 70 constructs - a smaller upper level than many modern systems of rule. Individuals getting bored needs consideration though... I like the 'children of stone' idea and really like the 'book of stone', but I may save them for another race later on in the campaign.

Thank you all for all your ideas and feedback. As a new player this is really valuable to me, and makes the game much more accessable.