Warforged

The Warforged are a race of golem-like automatons infused with the souls of once-living creatures.

Description
To the uninitiated, an unmoving Warforged might be mistaken for a statue with bodies of steel and stone, as well as wiry cords of alchemically crafted tissue.

Height and Weight
Warforged are taller and heavier than the dwarves who originally created them. Built to be protectors, most Warforged stand at least 6'0" tall and weigh at least 300 lbs, though examples have been recorded of smaller constructions.

Skin
Warforged "skin" is comprised of whatever particular material was used to construct them, most usually steel and stone. Color varies between the color of the bare material as well as any paint applied to their forms

Hair
Without the intervention of magic, the scalp of a Warforged is unable to grow hair. Some have been known, however, to sport wigs and toupets.

Eyes
The eyes of most warforged glow with a dim, cool light ranging in color from blue, to green, to yellow or red. Their shapes are carved most commonly to reflect those of most humanoids, though it is not uncommon to find Warforged whose heads were sculpted to resemble various designs of helmet.

Mouths
Most have a simple mouth and hinged jaw, without any sign of lips or tongue. Unable to eat and with their speech being magical in nature, they have no need off either.

Chapter 1: The Advent
They were the greatest treasure of the mountain's most treasured children. In ages long past, buried deep beneath myth and stone alike, there was one grand creation of the dwarves that stood above all others: the golem. Wrought from earth and stone in stylized renditions of the dwarves themselves, the golems were equal parts protector and symbol of faith. Said to house  the souls of great dwarven heroes, they are believed to have been the immortal embodiment of the best that dwarfkind had to offer. Opfern, the Forgemother herself, is commonly depicted in the form of an exquisitely crafted golem of shimmering bronze with eyes of deep-set ruby, even into this day and age when all traces of how to create such wondrous beings have long since been lost to time.

Or so it was believed.

In the years following the establishment of Völkervier and the end of the Krovi Wars, the mountain dwarves of Eisenholde would begin to look once again to their former surface colony in hopes of reclaiming that which they had abandoned. The Völkervites, still riding high on the tides of victory and fresh independence even decades after the defeat of the Krovi, balked at the thought of finding themselves once more under the heel of what was now commonly seen as a foreign throne, let alone one which had abandoned them in their time of need against the Krovi. Indeed, any throne at all stood against the democratic ideals that had formed in what was now the Federated Republic of Völkervier, a government ostensibly of and by the Völkervite people which governed both the city itself, as well as its various states and territories which had been established across northern Unsere.

Tensions between the Republic and Eisenholde only worsened as the years passed, and in response to the growing threat of war with their parent nation, a particular faction within the Republic hatched a plan of action. Die Roten Kleriker (or as they are more commonly known, "the Red Clerics") were a cult of growing influence, particularly within the city, with some believing they would come to rival even the esteemed Hammer of Opfern (the dwarven equivalent to the Hand of Akreena). Though they could trace their roots back to the days of Eisenholde, the Red Clerics were fiercely loyal to the relatively new Republic, seeing it as a fertile opportunity for new ideas outside the commonly accepted canon of belief that had generally stifled them in their years beneath the mountain. And, for the most part this proved to be true. Völkervier was a city of myriad ideas collected from the dwarves thesmelves, their Folk allies, and even their former enemies: the Krovi.

It was this last group  which most keenly interested the Red Clerics. Masters of both necromancy and the mysterious arts of blood magic, the Krovi held beliefs that, to the dwarves, were equal parts alien, terrifying, and ripe with fascinating potential. Contrary to what wartime propaganda had touted in years prior, the Krovi god of blood, Strýček (commonly known by his Folk name Agrios) was not a vicious or villainous entity by their tradition, but was rather seen a caregiver not so unlike Opfern herself in many ways the Red Clerics would enthusiastically enumerate. While the Forgemother was a goddess of life and creation itself, Strýček was a god of ownership and mastery over one's own life and destiny. Undeath was not inherently an abberation to the Krovi, nor was blood magic by its very nature a heresy. Both were seen as the domain of Strýček, and it was only in practicing these arts out of concert with his divine will that they were seen as evil.

Initially there was (as expected by the Red Clerics) pushback against the influx of these ideas, especially in regards to necromancy. Classically, to pervert the gifts granted by Opfern had been seen as the gravest of sins, a notion only fortified by the antipathy felt towards the strange and savage Krovi. Fearing retribution from the Hammer of Opfern, the Red Clerics pursued their ideas in private, leading to more than a few rumours of varying veracity regarding their rituals and practices. The worst of these rumors included (but were by no means limited to): ritual sacrifice of virgins, the consumption of infant flesh, the flaying of widows and widowers, and orgies induced by the usage of blood as an aphrodisiac.

In the months leading up to the war with Eisenholde, the Red Clerics' chief alchemists made great strides in their research in ways few would have dreamt to have been possible only a few years prior. Through vigorous scientific process and spiritual ritual, they had devised a method by which to bind a detached soul, either living or dead, to a body of appropriate construction. They had, as far as they believed, recreated the long-forgotten art of constructing golems.

According to city legend, it was by grim serendipity that the alarms of war's official declaration sounded throughout the streets of Völkervier the very night the first new "golem" was birthed. Eager to showcase their creations in dramatically appropriate fashion, the Red Clerics moved to birth more of the constructs, binding souls of both willing participants, as well as fallen heroes dating as far back as the first Krovi war. Their ranks swelled, and within a tenday a full battalion of these new soldiers made their debut upon the banks of the Klargesehen, eclectically armed and ready for battle. The armies of both Eisenholde and the Republic were in wary awe of the strange constructs. None outside the secretive halls of the Red Clerics knew of their existence until the Battle of Westbank. Most knew the legends of the long lost and much-revered golems of the dwarves, and so when these warriors charged the Eisenholde line on the side of the Republic, it was with much rejoicing on the side of the Völkervites, and with much fear and confusion on behalf of the royalists, who were summarily routed. In the afterglow of the battle, these would-be golems were christened with a name all their own, a name which would come to be both honored and resented, both pitied and esteemed. Forever after, these beings born of blood and alchemy would be known as the Warforged.

Chapter 2: The Fall
Within six short months, the war between Völkervier and Eisenholde came to a close. At first, the Warforged were welcomed home. After their marvelous display of effacacy on the fields of battle, they were seen as both heroes and as a symbol of the Republic's bright future. The Red Clerics basked in the praise being levied at their creations, more than happy to savor the shift in public opinion. Requests even begin to pour in from the public to have deceased relatives revived in these new pseudo-golems. These requests were met with hesitation at first, but as pressure from the public increased alongside promises of funding to support further alchemical and mystical research, the Red Clerics would eventually capitulate to public demand. Less than a year after the war had ended, Völkervier's streets were abuzz with the souls of the dead, all encased in shells of various designs. For a short while, things could not have looked better for the Red Clerics and their marvelous Warforged. That was, at least, until it became clear that all was not perfectly well.

During the early days of their resurrection, most Warforged were content to heed the orders of the Red Clerics and the Republic's military leadership whom they had been tasked with serving. So enraptured with the marvel of their creation that few questioned their seemingly unflinching, almost mechanical loyalty. As the months passed however, the individual behaviors and personalities of those souls who had been resurrected began to properly surface. This period would come to be known by some as the "Iron Baptism," as the mass of souls resurrected within a few short months of one another all began to awaken and gain true awareness around the same time.

A few warforged adapted to their new life (or unlife as many would note), re-entering society as best they could, but these were largely the exception. Most began to eventually suffer quirks of personality. Mania and depression were commonplace. At first, some suspected these to be the result of trauma suffered during the war, but as more and more Warforged (including those resurrected well after the war had ended) began to exhibit these behaviors, it became increasingly clear that whatever process the Red Clerics had employed to bring their creations to life had left many irrevocably damaged.

Reactions to this realization were split among the Völkervites. Some pitied the Warforged, if not the Red Clerics themselves whose reputation began to spiral as more and more families saw their resurrected loved ones suffer in their unnatural state. This pity waned greatly however after news tore throughout the city of one particular Warforged who seemingly turned on her family, murdering them in their sleep. Many began to see the destruction of all the pseudo-golems as the only viable solution, whether they exhibited signs of so-called "soul-scarring" or not. This was a conundrum for the Republic, for in the days following the war and the Warforged's grand welcome home, they had been granted citizenship with all the rights that followed. As such, mass-destruction of the pseudo-golems would be tantamount to genocide not only in the ethical sense, but in the much more dangerously legal.

Though many within the government were satisfied with the option of destruction regardless, it was the Hand of Akreena who proved an unlikely ally to the Red Clerics' creations. They declared the warforged themselves to be sacred creations of the Forgemother's children, regardless of however imperfectly or unethically their creation may have been. The Red Clerics were ordered to cease all production of any new Warforged however, and begrudgingly they gave at least the appearance of compliance. To alleviate the ails and treat those who had begun exhibiting signs of soul-scarring, an asylum was constructed under the guidance and supervision of the Hand of Akreena.

This unfortunately did not stop the public in their tracks, however much it may have stifled the flames. While the hastily-built asylum was able to house a great number of the suffering Warforged, it could not hold or treat them all. If the asylum would not take them, many families fearing for their lives simply threw their Warforged brethren to the streets, leaving them to fend for themselves. The bodies of pseudo-golems began to litter the city in varying states of destruction. It was clear that some had been murdered with the notion of a "painless" death in the killer's mind, but many others still were found utterly brutalized. It was not uncommon for Warforged to hesitate to even defend themselves against these attacks, for fear of either being sent to the asylum against their will, or charged with murder should they kill their attackers.

For those warforged who had become too dangerous for either the asylums, the public, or even the Völkervier Stadtwache to address with competency however, an alternative solution was required. Seeking to redeem themselves in the eyes of the people, and more importantly reclaim the prestige they had lost, the Red Clerics provided for the city a new breed of protector. Using data they had accrued through the rigorous process of crafting the Warforged, as well as methods they had surreptitiously gleaned from the Ghostslayers of distant Senzidash, they had developed a method for infusing a subject with an innate capacity to practice magic similar in nature to the blood priests of the Krovi. The subjects who survived this process would in time come to be known as "blood hunters."

Though initially resistant to approve any more of the Red Clerics' experiments, the mounting death tolls at the hands of rabid Warforged (and the ensuing violence perpetrated towards the Warforged in general as a result), all but forced their hands. Within weeks, the blood hunters proved their efficacy in tracking down and eliminating the most violent Warforged. Even centuries after the blood hunters broke from the Red Clerics and reformed themselves as dedicated monster hunters, there exists a general animosity between the two groups, with neither side wholly trusting the other.

Despite these hardships, the Warforged have survived into the modern day. Though it is commonly accepted that every one of the pseudo-golems suffers from some degree of soul-scarring, the effects are less severe for some than others. Today's world sees Warforged working in all manner of profession, and while the stigma against them is nowhere near what it was in the years immediately following their emergence, it is not uncommon to find those unwilling to serve or hire their kind. This has led to many leaving Völkervier or even Unsere altogether to find work elsewhere in the world, where the specifics of their origin are less readily understood.