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honourablejester · 4 years

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Ideas for Warforged (D&D)

Because magic robots/constructs are the best idea. I will admit that backstory/inspiration-wise, I’m fonder of things like Discworld’s golems or the Muses from Girl Genius. I like the feeling of ancient constructed things learning to be people.

(I also like the caster classes, which will possibly be really obvious in a minute)

Cleric

I love the Grave Domain for warforged. How does a constructed being conceptualise death? Especially if they get slapped in the face by it. Take the standard warforged background, the machine built for war, a constructed, immortal child created for violence. Have them watch their squishy biological comrades die. A lot. Do they have an epiphany? Do they become curious about the beliefs and fears around death? Do they want to give comfort to their friends? Do they start to think of mortal death as a reprieve from a life of endless service and violence? (Do they view undeath as a horrific corruption of their own constructed service and immortality, taking relief away from those who have earned it in death?) Imagine a warforged priest of a grave god. The serene, mechanical face. The slightly off, dispassionate gentility. The curiosity and care. I love it.

Druid

Circle of Spores! Sorry, but we are continuing the theme of decay and the undying here. But with spores there’s a lot of … I’m thinking post-apocalyptic fiction. Robots in the remnants. Wall-E, even. Your trash-heap, rusted, bucket-of-bolts survivor of a dead world or colony or underground kingdom. The curious innocent finding beauty in decay, or perhaps a wiser, more melancholy survivor. Or a darker one, cynical about the cycles of extinction and regrowth. Also, just the image. A strange, skeletal metal creature, crystal eyes glowing uranium green, strange mushrooms growing from their rusted plates and darkwood sinews, surrounded by an almost-sound, a subaudible buzzing that people feel in their teeth. Watching warily as new creatures wander through their ruins, or spurred by their own curiosity to venture up into some strange new world.

Bard

The Muses, here, so very much. 18thC automata. The music box song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. A construct built for beauty, grace, skill, to be the epitome of a craft, but also a construct that is very old. Built for kings, because who else could afford such breath-taking craftsmanship? Built to entertain or advise a ruler and their court, and so a lot wiser to the passions and vices underneath the pretty words than they seem. Students of history, who’ve seen it cycle through a few times. Maybe trying to escape, now. Find a simpler life. Or trying to affect things rather than just witness them, trying to be a hero or the villain or the spy instead of just the historian or the muse.

Paladin

Clockwork angels. Hubris and innocence all in one neat package. Constructs made in the image of celestials, complete with flightless bronze-and-silk wings, out of arrogance or hope or despair or for mysterious purposes that even they don’t know. Found in the laboratories of dead mages, or manufactured by warmongers for propaganda purposes. Innocent, still, hopeful, or else deeply, deeply cynical. Struggling to find or maintain a sense of their own identity, choosing oaths in honour or defiance of their image. Redemption, Crown, Conquest, Vengeance. Lots to have fun with.

Sorceror

We’re going more for the ‘touched by cosmic power’ angle than bloodlines, obviously, though there’s possibly some wiggle room if you go for weirder origins. Constructed with a little flesh and bone and blood from your creator, maybe? But I really like Shadow Sorceror here. A construct made in a dark ritual, touched by the fell energies of the Shadowfell. A strange, half-alive being, shadowed by darkness, who ‘woke’ in an empty ritual chamber with no idea of their nature or their purpose. Honestly, shadow sorceror is as good as warlock for the gothic, haunted end of origin stories, so might as well go full Frankenstein on the confused horror of a constructed being. Might lean a bit more on the ‘organic’ end of warforged construction here, darkwood, living stone, black metal. Just to match the aesthetic. Warforged are great for aesthetic.

Warlock

Speaking of. Just. I have already mentioned, but I love both warlocks and warforged, and they’re a lovely mix together. The Lurker Patron. A construct built to dredge a long-lost harbour, finding sentience and a strange ‘friendship’ while wandering the deeps. The Great Old One, a strange, mad being who cobbled you together from spare parts in an attempt to understand the life forms of this foreign plane. Fiend, the demon who was baffled and intrigued by the concept of an artificial soul, granting power just to see what temptation looks like in a heart made of crystal and stone (or the puppet master who stole the most beautiful and extraordinary puppet, to call back to the muses). The Archfey who built or stole themselves the perfect knight, a mobile statue or plaything that was never meant to win its own soul. There’s so many things to play with.

Rogue

To throw a bone to the non-caster classes. But. There is a lot of potential to the rogue, too. Assassin, particularly. One of the things that’s so cool with warforged is not only their own choices and motivations, but those of the ones who built them. Why train a perfect killing machine when you can build one? But then what happens when they become sentient? When they start to have feelings and opinions of their own? Rogue warforged have a lot of the same appeal as bard and paladin warforged for me. Beings built for the machinations of those around them, and struggling to free themselves and forge their own path. (Also I loved the Zeta Project cartoon as a kid and it rubbed off on me, and there’s something half-humorous and half-terrifying about a seven foot metal skeleton somehow built for stealth and infiltration).

Barbarian

My other favourite non-caster class, but there also some lovely things to work with here. Perhaps the flipside of the grave cleric above? The soldier warforged who grew to love battle instead, whose first emotions were the rage and terror and thrill of the battlefield. I like the Zealot barbarian here. The being literally made for the fight, who channelled it so perfectly that it drew the attentions of the gods of battle. But there’s also … the opposite of rage. When it’s a robot, a machine. There’s the image of the blank, emotionless killing frenzy. An anime I watched, Pumpkin Scissors, had a supersoldier as one of the main characters. A normally extremely sweet and gentle man, who could be brainwashed into a mindless killing state by a blue lantern. He was terrifying and tragic and unstoppable and broken. Imagine a warforged barbarian like that. A being terrified of the truly emotionless machine they become in battle, the remorseless frenzy they enter when injured or struck by the sight of blood, but believing they were built for nothing but war, knowing no way of living other than that.

… Um. In summary? Magic robots are great and, depending who built them and what for, can delve into tragic very quickly and easily. Heh. Though you can also easily go the benevolent creator route, the parent who taught them well, and take some much gentler angles on all of this. I’m just in a gothic mood tonight, apparently.

Also, there is just no beating the imagery you can build up around a living wood-and-metal being. And I’m not just saying that because I love a) robots, b) skeletons, and c) robot skeletons.

Honest, yer honour.

#d&d #dnd #warforged #character concepts #robots #skeletons #i am in a gothic mood #okay then

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saferemercer · 3 years

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Worthy

June 26th, Late Evening, After the Queen’s Gala

"There ya go lass, she's all set for yeh!"

Safere glanced at the dwarf gryphon master, still holding the winning ticket in her hand. To the right of her, stood Snowbeak, the majestic, white Wildhammer gryphon she had just won in a high society raffle. The beast was immaculate; feathers shining in the moonlight, beak seemingly polished to a mirror sheen and talons sharp as adamantine steel. She was straight out of a storybook.

Safere looked down at her rented tuxedo; a crab meat stain on her collar, one cufflink gone and her shoes having stepped in something grey and slimy. She didn’t want to think about that too much. All in all, she felt pretty damn foolish standing in front of this paragon of gryphon-kind, ready to take her as a mount.

“So uh...you have any tips for how to...uh, care for her?” she asked. “I mean...I have another gryphon, but he’s older and kinda half-blind…”

The dwarf chuckled, unlatching the gryphon’s chains. “Oh, Snowbeak is ah’ feisty young lass, she’s gonna want ta’ fly around prettah’ often. You’ve got ah’ roost fer her, yeah?”

Safere rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah...definitely,” she hoped.

“Good, good. She needs tha’ best of care! You gala types can manage that, ah’m sure. You ah’ knight or ah’ cleric of some kind?”

Safere rubbed her head, harder. “I’m...a...uh, protector.”

“Protector! Ha, tha’ sounds good! Yeah, Snowbeak is fit fer the grandest of adventures. The soarin’ clouds, the tallest mountains, the greatest-”

“I get it, I get it,” Safere said, through gritted teeth. “I’m...sure we’ll have a wonderful time together.”

The dwarf shrugged and gave Snowbeak a final pat on the snout, before he opened the gate and led her out of the pen. Safere walked up to her, trembling just a little. She raised a hand and brought it down to touch her beak. The gryphon stared into her eyes, as she was touched. Safere swore she could sense a subtle disappointment in those eyes. She sighed.

“I know, Snowbeak...we’ll...make this work,” Safere said, now starting to regret ever taking a raffle ticket.

July 20th, Mid Evening, Crowsfield.

Snowbeak was screaming at her. Well, squawking might have been more accurate, but it sure felt like screaming to Safere. If the beast could speak common, she had an idea of the level of vitriol she’d be experiencing right now.

“I know, I get it, you’re angry!” Safere grumbled, trying to clean her feathers with an old brush. “We don’t...we don’t fly as often as you’d like...and I wish I could fix that, but I just...don’t travel as often as some people. Ok?! Buddy doesn’t mind, do ya pal?”

She turned to the black gryphon in the pen next to her. The cross-eyed, older gryphon was chewing on a large ferret he had caught earlier that day, but in the same way a tired farmer might sip on a tall glass of sweet tea. He was in no rush.

As if Snowbeak could understand Safere’s words (she was almost certain she could, some days), the majestic gryphon snorted at her, in seeming disgust.

Safere sighed. “Yeah, I know, you don’t like being compared to Buddy. But he’s the only gryphon I’ve ever really known before, so maybe we can just-”

Snowbeak raised her legs and flapped her wings right in Safere’s face, knocking her to the ground, landing flat on her ass in the dirt.

“Oh, fine!” Safere shouted, lying down in defeat. “Have it your way! I’ll just let you-”

“Might I be of assistance, Miss Mercer?”

She looked up to see a man in copper colored armor, standing above her, offering a hand. She turned around and gripped his palm, rising back to her feet. She recognized the man immediately. He was the only one she knew who would wear a fully enclosed helm in such sweltering weather.

“Mordecai, right?” Safere asked, despite knowing she was right. She just..hadn’t spoken to him that much.

He nodded. “Indeed, Miss Mercer. Mordecai Sharpe, at your service.” He sounded calm and helpful, even if his expression was entirely unreadable. That copper-colored mask he wore always bore the same neutral, placid expression. His eyes were the only thing that could be seen. Kind brown orbs, blinking every so often.

Safere sighed, dusting off her trousers. “Well, uh, have you got any experience with gryphons? At least more than I do?”

Mordecai nodded once more. “I rode one for nearly a decade. Back when I was a more...active member of The Silver Hand. She was a gorgeous creature, fair and swift...but I didn’t appreciate her at the time.”

Safere blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I...neglected her,” he began to say. “Not in the sense of health or feeding, I assure you. I always kept her well fed, clean and cared for. Until the day she died, she never missed a meal, nor was she abused. But…”

The man’s shoulders fell, for but a moment. “I didn’t truly appreciate her. I never even named her. Not really. Whenever a fellow knight would ask me, I would say something like...Silverwing or Judgment. But it was a hollow excuse for a title. I simply didn’t care. She was a beast to be used for glory. Much like a sword or a shield. Cared for, certainly. But never loved. Never seen as more than a tool.”

Mordecai turned to look at the gryphons. “Do I have your leave to approach her?”

“Sure,” Safere replied, shrugging. “Just be ready, because she’s in a mood.”

He walked up to Snowbeak, slowly reaching into a pouch on his waist and retrieving a handful of wildberries. Once he reached the gryphon, he held out his palm and let her eat from it. She did so with some trepidation, but soon enough, had cleaned his gauntlet entirely. She then leaned her head against his arm, as he stroked her gently.

“A beautiful lady...you should be very-”

“HELP!”

Mordecai and Safere turned around to see a young woman running toward them, a distraught expression on her face. The paladin ran forward to meet her halfway.

"Miss, what is wrong?!"

"Please, they took my brother, please they took him into the forest-"

He laid a hand on her shoulder...and she seemed to calm down, enough to explain more clearly, at least. By then, Safere had joined Mordecai by his side and was listening closely.

"She took Theodore, the...some witch, I saw her snatch him from his bedroom window and take him into the moor! I tried to run after her, but these...skeletons rose up from the dirt! Undead monsters! Out in the Bleakmoor! Please sir, miss…please help my brother…” the girl wailed, tears welling in her brown eyes.

“We have no time to lose. Miss, return to your home and wait for us there. We will find him. Safere,” Mordecai said, turning to face her. “Might we-”

She nodded, already running back to Buddy. “Come on!” she called back. Fiddling with her ebon gryphon’s chain, Safere mounted him and pulled the reins. He may have been an older gent, but Buddy knew when it was time to get serious. Years of getting Safere out of sticky situations had given him a kind of sixth sense. He rose to his feet and flapped his wings, ready to burst off.

Mordecai was running up now, while the young woman returned to her homestead. He looked at Buddy and Safere. “I...don’t know if I’ll be able to fit on there with you. Or if your gryphon can carry my extra bulk,” he said, gesturing to his mix of chain and plate mail. “Perhaps if-”

Safere shook her head. “You’re taking Snowbeak!”

The paladin shook his head. “No, miss Safere, she is yo-”

“This is not the time to argue, pal! Get to it!” Safere shouted.

Mordecai nodded and ran to the ivory bird, expertly climbing upon her saddle without even a wayward twitch from the proud beast. She shrieked out a battle-squawk and took to the air almost immediately, leaving Safere and Buddy to catch up.

They were soaring above the hills now, keeping low enough to spot any figures...if it wasn’t so bloody dark.

“I can’t see a damn thing down there!” Safere shouted, the wind coursing through her hair.

“Let us remedy that,” Mordecai roared back. “Cover your eyes, Mercer! For just a moment!”

Safere did as she was told, bringing her wrist back across her eyes, just as the night turned to sunrise in front of her. Her peripheral vision was a holy inferno, but it soon faded enough until she felt comfortable to gaze openly again. Mordecai was still glowing, casting a net of light across the hilly moor below.

“There!” he said, pointing down. Sure enough, no longer shrouded beneath a barrow-hill, Safere could spot a crowd of figures. Over a dozen skeletal warriors, covered still in the dirt and grime of their former resting places. Most gripped broken hatchets and rusted blades. A couple held ancient shortbows. These two decrepit snipers took aim as Safere and Mordecai came down upon them. With surprising dexterity, an arrow was loosed, aimed right at Snowbeak’s chest.

But the gryphon saw it coming, swiping the missile away with a talon. The other shot toward Safere and Buddy; its aim was less true, allowing them to dodge the projectile with a quick turn. By then, the two of them were landing. Hard.

Snowbeak smashed into the center of the undead, scattering two of the boney bastards into splinters. Mordecai pulled his great morningstar from his shoulders, the flanged head gleaming with golden fire, as he slammed it into the rotting ribcage of another, crushing the sternum and wasting the foul creature away.

Safere came down less glamorously, but no less effective. Her cutlass in one hand, silver edged and shining, slicing through the skull of the axe wielding monster nearest to her. The foolish archer she had landed by, tried to swat Buddy with his bow, only for the elder gryphon to grab him in his beak and snap his spine.

“Interlopers!” A shrill voice screamed. Safere turned to see a wretched old hag, twisted and deformed, holding a young boy by the scruff of his pajamas. The child was wailing, kicking at his captor, to seemingly no avail. “You will not stop the sacrifice to Gorak Tul!”

“Gorak Tul is vanquished, fiend! Killed in his own realm of shadow and failure!” Mordecai growled, shattering the knees of an approaching skeleton. “You will accomplish nothing!”

“Yeah, you suck!” Safere helpfully added, stabbing another undead.

“Fools! Gorak Tul’s spirit lingers, forever! And I will be his new bride!” the witch shrieked, raising a twisted dagger to the child’s throat. “The boy’s blood will show me the way!”

Safere grit her teeth, looking around for any options. There were still a half dozen skeletons advancing. Buddy was fighting off one more to her left. Snowbeak...was gone. Where had she-

Mordecai let loose a sharp whistle. The gryphon moved so fast, she was more of a blur of white upon the wind, than any discernible form. Just as the witch had barely begun to look behind her, she was rammed by the Wildhammer gryphon, sending her gangling form flying forward, her loose grip on the boy’s shirt going slack, as he fell a few feet to the ground.

Safere ran over to him, making sure he was unharmed. Aside from some dirt stains and a bruise on his shoulder, he seemed to be fine, if still wailing and terrified. Within that handful of moments, Mordecai, Buddy and Snowbeak had dispatched the handful of remaining skeletons, their bones scattered and unmoving. The witch...lay in a defeated pile nearby, groaning like a sickly weasel.

“You are beaten, monster. Submit and be judged!” Mordecai commanded, his aura pulsing like wildfire. He stood above the subdued wretch, morningstar at her throat.

The witch mewled and raised her elongated arms, in a show of surrender. “I...yes, I am defeated! Oh, brave and powerful paladin! I...submit to your mercy! Please!” Her yellow eyes wide and pleading.

“Mercy! How could a villain such as you deserve-” Mordecai began to say...before stopping and sighing. “Very well, witch. You will come with me, bound and subdued...to be judged by the people of Autumnhearth! And see what mercy they lay upon you!”

The paladin barely shifted his gaze, but for a mere moment, he did glance at his belt, to retrieve a length of rope...only for Safere to watch as the hag began to channel a pale blue energy in her palm.

A Ruinous Bolt! Safere thought to herself. She had been researching just last night. In a flash, she drew her Gnomish pepperbox from the back of her trousers and fired. One, two, three, four…

Her aim did not fail her. Each silver shot ripping into the hag’s flesh, with the last metal ball landing right between her sour yolk-yellow eyes...which made the spell in her palm fade away and the witch slump back onto the ground, as dead as her would to be husband.

Mordecai looked back at the shot riddled body and exhaled. “My thanks, Miss Mercer.”

She nodded, sweat dripping down her forehead. In her arm, the young boy blinked and wiped away tears. “That was...so loud!” he squeaked.

“Ah yeah...sorry about that, Theodore,” Safere said, grimacing. “But it’s over, your sister is waiting for you.”

The boy nodded and hugged her, still crying, but less feverishly. Mordecai came over to him, kneeling down and offering a hand.

“How would you like to fly on a gryphon, master Theodore?” he asked.

For likely the first time that night, the boy smiled.

--------------

The reunion with Theodore’s sister (Charlotte, they learned) was full of more tears and smiles alike, but the boy was soon returned to his own bed, with a small number of local farmers promising to watch over the house until morning. Mordecai would join them, sitting down by the front fence with Safere. Snowbeak and Buddy waited nearby.

“That was...an exciting evening, wouldn’t you say, Miss Mercer?” Mordecai said, having removed his mask, among the two of them. Safere had seen his burned visage before and grown accustomed to it. The permanent half grin across his partial lips and exposed cheek, were little more than a beauty mark to her by now.

“Hell of a lot more...fighting than I expected, that’s for damn sure,” she said, sipping from a glass of fresh milk. Supplied by Theodore's grateful farming family, after the two of them had refused the meager amount of silver they had scraped together as a reward. “But this is good cow juice.”

Mordecai sipped from his tin straw and nodded. “Indeed. Regardless, you fought well. Thank you again for your expert shooting.”

Safere chugged the last half of her moo-juice and stood up, brushing off her pants. “Don’t mention it, Mordo. Last thing I needed tonight was having to tell Wes that her Warden took a Ruinous Bolt to the chest.”

He chuckled and stood with her. “You recognized the spell? How impressive.”

“Yeah, all that reading paid off, just like Mere said it would,” Safere replied, smiling.

“You make the steward proud, I’m sure,” Mordecai said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you returning to Easthollow with your gryphons, then? They’ve had a busy evening too.”

“One of them, yeah,” Safere said.

“Good, I hope they-”

The paladin turned to look at her, confusion in his eyes. “One of them?”

“I’m leaving Snowbeak with you, Mordo. You made an incredible team. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna break that up.”

Mordecai shook his head, raising a hand in disagreement. “No, Miss Mercer, I couldn’t accept such a-”

“First off, call me Safere. Or Saf, even,” Safere said, making sure her cutlasses were properly attached to her belt. “Secondly, I’m not gonna hear any arguments on this. Snowbeak deserves someone like you. Someone brave and worthy of her. Someone who can make the best use of her skills. And that ain’t me.”

The man was silent for a moment. “You are worthy of more than you think, Mi...Safere. And you are as brave as any champion of the Hand that I’ve ever known. You joined me in the search for Theodore without a second thought. Lent me your steed, without hesitation. Charged into the mass of undead and stood by my side.”

He whistled, causing Snowbeak to trot over. Mordecai rubbed her neck and watched as she nuzzled back. “If this is your desire...your command, I will do so. I will care for and love Snowbeak, as I failed to do for my former steed. But never believe it is because you are unworthy. Promise me this.”

Safere sighed and smiled, looking down at her boots for a second or two. Before returning his gaze and nodding. “I promise.”

He nodded back. “Good. Also, I ask that you bring Buddy along to visit every so often. The two are quite...attached.”

She blinked and looked from Snowbeak to Buddy. The white gryphon was looking back at him, softly cooing. Buddy in turn was waving his wings slowly and...prancing?

“Buddy, you scoundrel!” Safere exclaimed, laughing. “Have you been laying down some moves behind my back?!”

Buddy squaked, shaking his wings and hopping up and down. Snowbeak scraped her talons in the dirt and squawked back.

“Best warn your gryphon master of the possibility of eggs, in the future, eh?” Mordecai cautioned, chuckling along with her.

Safere gave him a thumbs up. “You bet. Keep safe out there, Mordo! See you soon!” She left with a spring in her steps, mounting her flirtatious bird and soaring off toward Easthallow. The wind in her hair felt like energy flowing through her. She let out a loud “woooooooooo!” and grinned.

It had been quite a night to fly.

#warcraft ocs #warcraft story #short story #gryphons #safere #mordecai sharpe

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