Monster Mondays began as a series of posts inspired by James Jacobs’ 10 goblin facts written for Pathfinder. Now, I’m creating new lore, encounters, unique NPCs and more for creatures in the Monster Manual. The goal is to provide habits, scene-setting tools, encounter hooks, and more variety, especially for monsters that don’t get quite as much love as dragons, beholders, mind flayers, and liches.
This week I’m bringing to life four golem NPCs to drop into your campaign world. The Monster Manual presents golems as carefully crafted bodies of mineral or flesh inhabited by a weak earth elemental to provide it with power. These automatons respond to commands and have an array of magical resistances that make them quite a challenge for adventurers.
The Farmhands
- Bio: A quartet of clay golems works a quiet farm, tending livestock and growing fruits and vegetables. They have done so time out of mind. Tales say they were a gift to an elderly farmer who provided some unknown service to a powerful wizard. Plow tends the fields and is covered in sparse grass and occasional wildflowers. Shear most closely resembles a human and tends pigs, chickens, cows, sheep, and goats. Coin is stiff, partially set and keeps the stall where traders come, selling produce and buying seeds and livestock. Hammer’s mouth is full of tools and nails for mending fences and maintaining the homestead.
- Alternative Characterization: Some believe the farm is only a front and that the four golems have been left to guard a treasure, but would-be thieves return empty-handed and bruised.
- Lair: The farm is far from any current settlement though traders frequent its stall. The farm structures are of an old style.
- Loot: A collection of coins totaling 30,000 pp and a staff of the woodlands, all buried under the barn.
The Patron
- Bio: The Patron is a flesh golem clothed in a massive, hooded cloak. The Patron is known for daily appearances in a city’s street market, going from one stall to the next making purchases from a neatly organized list. The Patron is known for paying significantly more than the asking price for each item. The golem has been making these daily shopping trips for decades, though no one knows who writes the lists.
- Alternative Characterization: There are rumors that the Patron is the reanimated child of a wealthy noble, cast out of the family home but given a hefty allowance to live on.
- Lair: The Patron moves quickly and takes a circuitous route home. Those who have managed to tail the golem report that the Patron’s abode is a simple one-room building at the end of an alley with a chair, a fireplace, and a dumbwaiter that goes up despite the lack of a second floor.
- Loot: A bag of holding containing 500 gp.
The Guardian
- Bio: Appearing in times of crisis to assist in the defense of a major harbor city, the Guardian is a legendary iron golem. Once gilded, flecks of gold are still apparent across its chassis. The golem typically appears wading through the waters of the harbor, disappearing back into the depths before it can be investigated.
- Alternative Characterization: Suspicious guards claim that the iron golem is actually piloted, like a suit of powered armor.
- Lair: If one were to successfully follow the Guardian when it leaves the city, they would find a starkly furnished cavern accessible only by an underwater tunnel.
- Loot: An aparatus of Kwalish, a cloak of the manta ray, and a manual of iron golems.
The Tombstone
- Bio: More a site of pilgrimage than an entity, the Tombstone is an ancient stone golem inscribed with the history and myths of the land around it. The Tombstone is said to guard the burial mound of an ancient monarch. Its surface is covered in minute runes. It moves so rarely that pilgrims partake in rites to remove moss and vines from it, but some claim it will strike down anyone that desecrates the location of its vigil.
- Alternative Characterization: Skeptics say the Tombstone is dormant, little more than a statue burdened with the weight of centuries of superstition.
- Lair: The Tombstone sits atop a hill surrounded by a ring of standing stones. There is a tomb complex in the hill, but its entrance is hidden.
- Loot: A holy avenger hidden within a hollow cavity in the golem’s chest.
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