Are All Golems Golems?

In Legend Quest, golems can be formed in any shape the enchanter (and his stone carver) can imagine.  Golems made of stone are not remarkably different from golems made of iron.  The important part of this is that these are created creatures and mindless on their own.  This means we are ignoring the LQ earth golems and that other game’s forged people “race”, at least for now.

So our question really comes down to how do you control a mindless creature?  This same question can be asked of most skeletons and zombies.  Why do most people (we mean players) assume that a newly risen zombie knows how to hold its sword and swing it?  Why does the spell caster who just crafted a golem think it understands commands like “go kill that warrior and bring me his helmet”?

Now some of this depends on how your created creatures are formed.  In LQ it takes a while (a day or two) to put a zombie together.  It isn’t something you just pull out of the ground.  OK, it can be with the bag of bones spell.  And maybe the zombies are animated by a style of death magic that utilizes “forgotten memories” of the corpse in the spell, allowing it knowledge of how to swing that sword.  So that’s why we’ll focus just on magical constructs, like golems, for the rest of this.

Golems don’t have memories to utilize.  OK, so games have the flesh golems, but this isn’t necromancy and they shouldn’t be able to reach back into their memories in order to use old skills.  If they do, they are going to pull out a lot more of those memories and they are going to cause a lot more trouble than they would be worth!

What can we be sure of with any magically constructed creature?  Poison immunity.  No need for sleep.  Tireless.  Limited or no brain activity (we assume none).  Are these of benefit?  Of course they are!  What else?  Expensive!  How expensive?  Well, so expensive that few GMs will allow the party members to have them, and if they do, the golem has to be treated like a figure of glass.  If the golem cost you 10,000 whatevers, don’t use it as a meat shield.  There are living creatures almost as stupid who will act as meat shields for far less.

Without trying to dig deeply into any particular set of game rules - golems are great fun for GMs.  They can stand absolutely still, resembling statues or gargoyles until they spring to life and surprise the party.  In fact, they can stand still for centuries.  Long after the guy who built it is dead and gone, the golems will still be standing there protecting whatever they were supposed to.  This makes them perfect “ruins” monsters.

But that same trait can be used for living characters as well.  Do your adventurers always wait for the bad guys to be asleep before attacking?  Fine, put some golem guards to work.  They are always awake and never tire.  String bells on them and the second the golem gets into a fight, it will serve as its own alarm bell.  That way it won’t have to stop and hit the warning gong; the noise will just start.

We know - There is a strong faction of people out there who don’t care about anything that doesn’t do damage in an actual fight, but golems can be so much more than just stone fighters.  The tireless aspect allows them to work 24 hours a day (or 21 if you’re from Fletnern).  The poison resistance and no breathing thing can be used to allow them to walk underwater, through evil forests with poisonous plants, or ignore that poison spitting dragon you thought was so tough.

So when to use them outside of combat?  Think of them as engines that never need to eat, drink or rest.  Your fantasy house doesn’t have air conditioning?  Let the golem fan you all day long - or turn the axle that fans the whole house - or maybe bellows?  Not really sure how that works, but maybe.

But that can work too.  The golem pumps the bellows on the forge with one hand and swings the hammer with the other - boom - better than an apprentice who is always bitching about being tired and he swings harder than the veteran smith.  Or pulls as strong (or stronger) than the mule.  Or carries chests filled with treasure that the party never would have been able to budge.

There are often people who try to use magic to mimic modern day conveniences - like our fanning suggestion.  Golems aren’t just engines or vehicles, they’re the fantasy era robot.  How interesting are robots?  Well, judging from the amount of sci-fi stories about them, pretty darn interesting.  But we said they were mindless?  So what?  This is high fantasy, who’s to say that a demon, ghost or something cannot take over the golem?  That would be pretty cool - needing to exorcize the golem in order to regain control of it!

Please don’t get hung up on what’s different about golems between the different games.  Recognize these things for what they are - massively strong soldiers or laborers who never tire and will never run away in fear.  That is a cool thing!