GEARFORGED
Originally created as powerful soldiers, gearforged
must now find their own paths to navigate the second
life they’ve been given. Many devote themselves to
civil service, others to their gods. Some dedicate their
extraordinarily long lives to the pursuit of knowledge. A
few, naturally, seek out lives of adventure.
The gearforged are an artificial race. More importantly,
its members are created one at a time and come from a vast
array of backgrounds. Nevertheless, they maintain rich
traditions of history, culture, and spirituality all their own,
largely because of the influence of the race’s patron, the
gear goddess Rava.
FORM AND FUNCTION
All gearforged were once other creatures with
flesh‑and‑blood bodies, but their conscious minds
were transplanted into articulated bodies of iron, steel,
brass, and wood, driven by pistons and springs. Each is
as distinctive in appearance as other people are. Some
entities spend a fortune on these new bodies, while others
scrape together anything that will work—especially if the
subject is aging or ill.
All gearforged are made in humanoid shape. The vast
majority fall into one of two styles: those that are roughly
human-sized, with articulated joints, hands, feet, and
crystal lens eyes; and a version made by dwarves that
mirrors their shorter, stouter body shape. Dwarflike
gearforged are more common in the cantons of the
Ironcrags than in the Free City of Zobeck, but they’re
universally accepted as receptacles for dwarf souls.
Gearforged mechanisms are more than mechanical,
because gearforged are machines with souls. Their arms
and legs are driven by everwound springs. Their minds are
actuated by memory gears, transverse cognition gearing,
and the marvel of a soul gem connected directly to a maze
of silver and mithral steam, spark, and magical conduits.
These elements reside in a shell of iron, brass, and steel.
GEARFORGED COMPONENTS
The range of gearforged anatomy in all its variants is
remarkable, but all gearforged share some common parts.
Everwound Springs. These magical springs provide
energy over long periods, effectively acting as the power
sources for most of the gearforged’s moving parts. A
broken everwound spring results in the loss of function in
that digit or limb.
Soul Gem. The mind of a gearforged creature is as sharp
as that of any flesh-and-blood soul, but it is more portable.
The animating, vital principle of a gearforged—its will,
its personality, its mind—are retained in a soul gem. Its
destruction means the death of that gearforged.
Memory Gears. These delicate constructions are
scroll‑like ribbons pierced with thousands of pin holes and
wound about with tiny enchantments of great complexity.
The memory of a gearforged for all the days after its
creation lives in the memory gears. Older gearforged have
many such gears, and the material component for the
magic to create them requires one new gear for every 10
years of life. Installing one requires one day’s work and
2,000 gp.
Other gearforged can read memory gears salvaged from
a dead gearforged, but it’s a complex, time-consuming
process. It’s also viewed with some alarm by most
gearforged, since it is akin to peering into the most private
details of a creature’s life. Installing a used memory
gear into a new or existing gearforged requires a new
soulforging and at least one week before the recipient can
interpret and understand the memories.
GEARFORGED NAMES
Some gearforged use the same name they had before they
became gearforged. Others adopt a new name, drawing on
any culture they admire. And a few take on an aspirational
name representing a virtue they hope to embody, such as
Courage, Noble, Faithful, Endurance, or Truth.
GEARFORGED TRAITS
Your gearforged character has certain characteristics in
common with all other gearforged.
Ability Score Increase. Two different ability scores of
your choice increase by 1.
Age. The soul inhabiting a gearforged can be any age. As
long as its new body is kept in good repair, there is no
known limit to how long it can function.
Alignment. No single alignment typifies gearforged.
Size. Gearforged are as tall as either dwarves or humans,
but they weigh between 250 and 300 pounds. Your size
is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Type. You are of the humanoid (gearforged) type.
Constructed Body. Your consciousness and soul reside
within a soul gem to animate your mechanical body. As
such, you are a living creature with some of the benefits
and drawbacks of a construct.
• You cannot eat, drink, or breathe. You can’t drink
potions or gain benefits that come from drinking,
eating, or inhaling vapors.
• You do not naturally sleep.
• During a rest, you must perform maintenance on your
gears, springs, and joints, following the normal rules
governing rest and activity. While performing this
maintenance, you are aware of your surroundings but
you have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks.
If you go longer than 24 hours without performing
maintenance (you don’t take a long rest), you gain one
level of exhaustion. All exhaustion gained this way
disappears after your next long rest.
• You can’t be stabilized when dying with a Wisdom
(Medicine) check or spare the dying. Instead, a successful
DC 10 Intelligence check or a mending cantrip is needed.
• You regain only one-half the usual number of hit points
from spells or magical effects with the words cure, heal,
or healing in their titles.
Flesh of Steel. You are immune to disease, poison
damage, and the poisoned condition.
Solid Construction. If you are killed but your soul
gem and memory gears are still intact, you can be
restored to life if your body is repaired and soulforging
is cast on it again. Because the body already exists, the
cost of the ritual is just 500 gp, plus the cost of repairing
the body (GM’s discretion, typically 1d4 x 50 gp). If your
body was destroyed but your soul gem and memory
tapes are intact, they can be implanted into a new body
at the standard cost (10,000 gp). The only other magic
capable of bringing you back from the dead is a wish
spell, which restores you fully.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Machine
Speech and Common.
Just making a space for us to talk to each other as we develop concepts.
