atom crash
First Post
I’m looking for a name for the living construct race in my campaign. I don’t want to use the term “warforged” because they were created at a secret military facility called “The War Forge,” so it's a bit too generic for my tastes. Plus it might be too easily confused with the facility where they were made. These living constructs were created recently under the supervision of artificers by gnomish scientists who were looking to invent “remote control” soldiers or some form of “intelligent armor.” The race is a new creation and not yet open for PCs, but I plan to introduce the race as an adversary for my players very soon.
Some background for the race of living constructs in my camapign:
Nearly 1000 years ago Zil-Marchand – the capital city of the gnomish homeland – fell to an invasion by several tribes of kobolds under the leadership of their “god,” a black dragon. The gnomes fled, leaving behind their workshops and homes, their libraries and laboratories, their accumulated wealth and knowledge.
Since then, the gnomes have taken up residence in many cities across the globe, forming enclaves within established cities rather than building new cities of their own. You see, every time the gnomes have established their own city it has ended very badly for them. They learned their architecture from the dwarves, so they built cities in mountains and other rocky areas, but they just didn’t have the military prowess to effectively defend these cities from the dangers they face.
The gnomes believe that one day Garl Glittergold will lead them back to Zil-Marchand and allow them to defeat the dragon and retake their homeland. From time to time, groups of gnomish adventurers will launch strikes into Zil-Marchand to try to win back parts of the city or just recover some loot in the form of material wealth, magic items or some bit of forgotten lore. These endeavors are mostly unsuccessful, because the kobolds are dug in too well. They’ve had 1000 years to bolster their defenses. Gnomes are great guerrilla tacticians, but in a straight fight the kobolds are going to whip them every time.
Then a couple of gnomish engineers came up with an idea: if they could build a tough construct warrior that could go in and fight rather than sending in gnomes to get killed, they might be able to retake their homeland. So these engineers began working on the prototype for a construct warrior they were calling “intelligent armor.” Then they ran out of materials and funding.
They were overjoyed when they were approached by representatives of a magocracy -- Archemaign -- that offered them a sweet deal: all the funding they needed, in exchange for simple supervision by Archemaign’s artificers. And of course, they’d have to share their designs with their benefactors. They jumped at the offer. They were moved to a secret military research facility called “The War Forge” and given unlimited access to materials for the project.
You see, Archemaign was secretly supplying their neighbor and ally with new weapons to fight a war with that had been going on for about 10 years. The magocracy was currently looking into ways to bolster the ranks of their ally’s armies – casualties in the ongoing war had made trained soldiers the most difficult resource to replenish. But if they could build more warriors, they’d have a definite advantage. Of course, the representatives of the magocracy didn’t tell the gnomes their designs were being used to build an army.
Early designs were moderately successful, but the mechanical soldiers were bulky and slow and could only follow simple commands. They couldn’t react well to changing battlefield situations. They didn’t have a functional brain. So the artificers of Archemaign secretly tasked another group of gnomes to come up with a solution to this problem independently of the first group.
This second group of gnomes was working on a way to temporarily store the consciousness of fallen comrades until the body could be repaired as a means of either granting a form of immortality or at least getting around the time limits of raise dead spells. The artificers supplied these gnomes with some strange crystals they had found on a foray into the astral plane. When the first experiments with transferring consciousness into the crystals was successful, the War Forge put the “intelligent armor” into full production. Of course, they built man-sized models rather than the dwarf-sized model the gnomes had built (gnomes instinctively think of the dwarven physique as perfect for combat, since dwarves make such effective warriors, plus a smaller construct would be perfect for getting back into the gnomish city.)
The artificers found that the souls held in the crystals retained their intelligence, discipline and training, but many facets of personality were lost in the transfer. They were also somehow made immune to many mind-affecting conditions. The consciousnesses within the crystals were also receptive to their attempts at re-conditioning and re-training. Now they just had to find a way to install the consciousnesses into the construct bodies.
The first group of gnomes was supplied with one of the crystals – the fruits of another experiment with artificial intelligence, they were told by their patrons – and told to create an interface for the crystal in the “intelligent armor” prototypes. Meanwhile, the artificers of Archemaign began “requisitioning” the souls of fallen soldiers – enemy and ally alike – for use in the 5000 construct bodies they had forged. Archemaign’s agents simply carried the crystals across battlefields after the fighting had ended and collected the souls of as many soldiers as they could.
The gnomes were overjoyed at their first successful interface of crystal and construct. Then they were shown the training facility where the fruits of their labor were ripening. Their joy turned to horror when they learned that what they believed was an artificial intelligence they had installed into the construct was actually the soul of a slain soldier. They were further horrified to learn that there were 1000 copies of their working prototype that had been installed with the soul crystals, and these “recruits” were currently undergoing extensive combat training. They were told there were another 4000 models awaiting a crystal. And the worst horror of all was when they learned that the living constructs weren’t going to be used to launch an offensive to retake their homeland. The soldiers were going to be used by Archemaign’s ally in its war.
The gnomes planned to escape in the middle of the night and take the secrets of what they had done to the nation currently at war with Archemaign’s ally, hoping that they could avoid further bloodshed and loss by alerting the other nation to its impending peril. They also hoped the other nation could find a way to undo some of the damage they had done, possibly by sending squads to dismantle the finished constructs. They never got the chance. They were killed in an escape attempt and their souls collected for installation in a new warforged “scout” prototype.
So now I need a cool name for these living constructs. The name could be what was given to them by their gnomish creators. Or it could be a project name assigned to them by the artificers at the War Forge. It could even be an anagram (I briefly toyed with the idea of calling them the "cirim" -- for (c)onstructed (i)ntelligent (r)ecruit, (i)ndependently (m)obile, but that sounds too modern-tech or sci-fi for a D&D campaign). It could be a name given to these soldiers by the commanders and soldiers they've been training under, or by the human soldiers they'll have to fight alongside. I'm stumped, so please give me some suggestions.
Some background for the race of living constructs in my camapign:
Nearly 1000 years ago Zil-Marchand – the capital city of the gnomish homeland – fell to an invasion by several tribes of kobolds under the leadership of their “god,” a black dragon. The gnomes fled, leaving behind their workshops and homes, their libraries and laboratories, their accumulated wealth and knowledge.
Since then, the gnomes have taken up residence in many cities across the globe, forming enclaves within established cities rather than building new cities of their own. You see, every time the gnomes have established their own city it has ended very badly for them. They learned their architecture from the dwarves, so they built cities in mountains and other rocky areas, but they just didn’t have the military prowess to effectively defend these cities from the dangers they face.
The gnomes believe that one day Garl Glittergold will lead them back to Zil-Marchand and allow them to defeat the dragon and retake their homeland. From time to time, groups of gnomish adventurers will launch strikes into Zil-Marchand to try to win back parts of the city or just recover some loot in the form of material wealth, magic items or some bit of forgotten lore. These endeavors are mostly unsuccessful, because the kobolds are dug in too well. They’ve had 1000 years to bolster their defenses. Gnomes are great guerrilla tacticians, but in a straight fight the kobolds are going to whip them every time.
Then a couple of gnomish engineers came up with an idea: if they could build a tough construct warrior that could go in and fight rather than sending in gnomes to get killed, they might be able to retake their homeland. So these engineers began working on the prototype for a construct warrior they were calling “intelligent armor.” Then they ran out of materials and funding.
They were overjoyed when they were approached by representatives of a magocracy -- Archemaign -- that offered them a sweet deal: all the funding they needed, in exchange for simple supervision by Archemaign’s artificers. And of course, they’d have to share their designs with their benefactors. They jumped at the offer. They were moved to a secret military research facility called “The War Forge” and given unlimited access to materials for the project.
You see, Archemaign was secretly supplying their neighbor and ally with new weapons to fight a war with that had been going on for about 10 years. The magocracy was currently looking into ways to bolster the ranks of their ally’s armies – casualties in the ongoing war had made trained soldiers the most difficult resource to replenish. But if they could build more warriors, they’d have a definite advantage. Of course, the representatives of the magocracy didn’t tell the gnomes their designs were being used to build an army.
Early designs were moderately successful, but the mechanical soldiers were bulky and slow and could only follow simple commands. They couldn’t react well to changing battlefield situations. They didn’t have a functional brain. So the artificers of Archemaign secretly tasked another group of gnomes to come up with a solution to this problem independently of the first group.
This second group of gnomes was working on a way to temporarily store the consciousness of fallen comrades until the body could be repaired as a means of either granting a form of immortality or at least getting around the time limits of raise dead spells. The artificers supplied these gnomes with some strange crystals they had found on a foray into the astral plane. When the first experiments with transferring consciousness into the crystals was successful, the War Forge put the “intelligent armor” into full production. Of course, they built man-sized models rather than the dwarf-sized model the gnomes had built (gnomes instinctively think of the dwarven physique as perfect for combat, since dwarves make such effective warriors, plus a smaller construct would be perfect for getting back into the gnomish city.)
The artificers found that the souls held in the crystals retained their intelligence, discipline and training, but many facets of personality were lost in the transfer. They were also somehow made immune to many mind-affecting conditions. The consciousnesses within the crystals were also receptive to their attempts at re-conditioning and re-training. Now they just had to find a way to install the consciousnesses into the construct bodies.
The first group of gnomes was supplied with one of the crystals – the fruits of another experiment with artificial intelligence, they were told by their patrons – and told to create an interface for the crystal in the “intelligent armor” prototypes. Meanwhile, the artificers of Archemaign began “requisitioning” the souls of fallen soldiers – enemy and ally alike – for use in the 5000 construct bodies they had forged. Archemaign’s agents simply carried the crystals across battlefields after the fighting had ended and collected the souls of as many soldiers as they could.
The gnomes were overjoyed at their first successful interface of crystal and construct. Then they were shown the training facility where the fruits of their labor were ripening. Their joy turned to horror when they learned that what they believed was an artificial intelligence they had installed into the construct was actually the soul of a slain soldier. They were further horrified to learn that there were 1000 copies of their working prototype that had been installed with the soul crystals, and these “recruits” were currently undergoing extensive combat training. They were told there were another 4000 models awaiting a crystal. And the worst horror of all was when they learned that the living constructs weren’t going to be used to launch an offensive to retake their homeland. The soldiers were going to be used by Archemaign’s ally in its war.
The gnomes planned to escape in the middle of the night and take the secrets of what they had done to the nation currently at war with Archemaign’s ally, hoping that they could avoid further bloodshed and loss by alerting the other nation to its impending peril. They also hoped the other nation could find a way to undo some of the damage they had done, possibly by sending squads to dismantle the finished constructs. They never got the chance. They were killed in an escape attempt and their souls collected for installation in a new warforged “scout” prototype.
So now I need a cool name for these living constructs. The name could be what was given to them by their gnomish creators. Or it could be a project name assigned to them by the artificers at the War Forge. It could even be an anagram (I briefly toyed with the idea of calling them the "cirim" -- for (c)onstructed (i)ntelligent (r)ecruit, (i)ndependently (m)obile, but that sounds too modern-tech or sci-fi for a D&D campaign). It could be a name given to these soldiers by the commanders and soldiers they've been training under, or by the human soldiers they'll have to fight alongside. I'm stumped, so please give me some suggestions.
