Like James M, I have returned from the beach bearing gifts! Most of these bits I've been working on will be put up tomorrow, as driving 9 hours with a vicious sunburn on your back does little to encourage anything but unconsciousness, but here's a little taste before bedtime.
Dwarven Tomb Guardian
As a culture, dwarves have an unhealthy obsession with death. Not the concept, mind you, but the preparation. When a dwarf dies, the funeral preparation can take anywhere from a month to several years, depending on age, importance, success and piety. The greatest dwarves of a generation are entombed in massive mausoleums that resemble castles more than coffins, a symbol of their accomplishments and a guarantee of that consuming dwarven desire: to be remembered.
Usually, these tombs contain a fair share of the inhabitant's accumulated wealth and possessions. To ensure that they remain in their master's house, dwarven mausoleums are often booby-trapped in ingenious ways: swinging hammers, collapsing floors and the like. For those who hold particular reverence to dwarven culture, a magical guardian is carved of the same stone and iron from which the tomb was made. At the center of each newly created tomb guardian is a piece of its master, usually a fingerbone or tooth, but on some ocassions, an entire hand or skull could be embedded into the guardian. This relic attunes the golem-like creature to its duty; the larger the piece, the more stoic and cunning the construct becomes.
Dwarven tomb guardian: HD 6; AC 1 [18]; Atk 1 Fist (1d12); Move 6; Save 11; CL/XP 7/600; Special: Immune to non-magical weapons
Very flavorful, and definitely something I can see dwarves doing.
ReplyDelete