Not to be confused with The Warforged Lord.
The amnesiac creature known as The Autom Lord was is a Protoforged, a creature with all the elements of a Warforged, but pieced together in a tragic accident.
About[edit | edit source]
The Autom Lord was born as the human Jerome Dalton, Lord of the Sneerwell house of records In the 690s PR. Dalton would function as a head of laws and books in the small city of Sneerwell, where he would raise a family, including his wife and daughter. When presiding over law cases in the city, he would also use the formal moniker of Judge Jerome Dalton.
As Judge, he had impeccable posture, leaving his hands face down upon the table or clasped, quietly observing. He spoke deliberately and with conviction, often with an undertone of scorn. He showed little emotion and was known to bite back with disdain. In Lord Dalton's eyes, the law binds civilization together and must be respected. It was a heavy burden of service he carried.
History[edit | edit source]
Tragedy Strikes Dalton[edit | edit source]
Lord Dalton was caught in the crossfire of the fight for the crown in Sneerwell in the 690s PR. One evening while performing an audit on the Pendergras Industries factory in the city, Lord Dalton happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a dramatic act of anarchy, a group known as The Citizens for Integrity, led by Anema and a banished Colin, snuck into the city to blow up Colin's own factory, believing that it had been compromised by nefarious forces.
Never checking to see if there were innocents inside, the Citzens of integrity laid an assault that brought the building down on itself, causing unimaginable arcane elements including Wovenstone and Existence Crystals to shatter across the collapsing building, embedding itself haphazardly into the poor auditor's flesh.
Instead of dying, at the sun's first light, the newly created being crawled out of the wreckage, confused and full of power. It fled into the sewers of the city as it struggled with its own loss of memory. The one thing the Autom Lord could still remember was the faces of his wife and daughter, burned in as the last thing that went through his mind as a mortal human.
Tragedy Strikes Twice[edit | edit source]
Within the same week as the attack on the factory, the Mutated Chimera finally emerged from deep under Sneerwell. The city became a warzone, and in the rampage of the beast, buildings were flattened, and streets were flooded with noxious gases and poisonous waters.
Trudging back to his own house, the Autom Lord hoped to find his daughter, the face he knew would provide answers to his own existence. Instead, he found her, dead in the street after the monstrous beast rampaged through the residential district of the city. As neurons and circuits began to connect in his frankensteined brain, the Autom Lord believed he could save her.
Starting to understand that he had a life before this, the former Lord Dalton began to piece together his own experiments. If the stone and crystal lattice that pierced his body somehow saved him in the factory's collapse, could he perform the same accidental resurrection on his daughter? After all, aren't crystals and resurrections tied closely together?
[Input information from the QuelmarCon game here where the players discovered Dalton hiding in the sewers trying to save his daughter by stealing Automs and Crystals and alchemical ingredients from all over the city]
The Protoforged[edit | edit source]
Nearly a year after the Chimera's attack, The Autom Lord had reconciled with Colin Pendergras himself, who was obsessively interested in the scientific impossibility that was the Autom Lord. The Autom Lord brought his research to Colin, revealing that he believed that some of Colins own "Diamonds" were not diamonds at all, but another source of life and power that were the cause of his resurrections in the first place.
With their combined research, Colin was able to forge 7 more "Protoforged" in his hunt to create the perfect city defender. However, much to Colin's surprise, even without using a human body, the 7 Protoforged (including hero 7) had souls and dreams of their own. Not willing to go into the business of slavery, Colin abandoned this project, instead focusing back on the power of Bluestone and traditional construct-building methods, improving on his famous Autom design.
As for the Autom Lord? No one's established what happened after he helped Colin make those protoforged...and some say he still lurks out there.
Post-Reconciliation (693PR)[edit | edit source]
The only link left unsevered between Jerome and The Autom Lord was the image of Jerome's wife and daughter etched indelibly within his mind. The rest... AL had to construct himself. His attempt to revive his daughter fruitless. His wife... not even an inkling of where to start on that front. So what was the next logical step, when your mind consists of two faces and the results of your previous experiments? The knowledge, that sentient, autonomous life, unbounded by the limitations of physiological mortality, was not just possible, but in fact he now was an example himself?
There had to be more.
Whatever veil there was, whatever boundary between the ethereal and the tangible, the arcane, divine, and material: it was cracked within the Material Plane.
To a scholar, an academic, his proof would be derided by a mere initiate, but that would be folly on their part. One whose dipped into the font of knowledge, learned what there is to know, would recognize it as more veracious than the most airtight of theorems, theses or dissertations. But he felt them; the primal energies of the arcane, divine and material, flowing through his... well, whatever his new body had instead of veins. They were inextricably bound within him, the newfound connections to them his toolbox for his continued research and experimentation.
Continued Pursuits (693-700PR)[edit | edit source]
AL's discussions with Colin led him across Quelmar, first and foremost to Breme, where he shared his own notes and pored over the notes of Atnas Krause, another former collaborator of Colin's. It was a short lived research escapade, but the insight gained fueled AL indefinitely.
AL next found himself back within the borders of Isonhound, scouring the region for the remnants of the destroyed Pendergras factory, collecting enough for him to begin his experiments. But he was missing one key piece, the link between the discrete magical elements that he was bound together by. Colin was willing enough to discuss the properties of some of the materials AL ended up gathering, but how he planned to use it was apparently a company secret.
Armed with almost all he needed, he ended up resorting to less... palatable methods of experimentation, which led him towards the lawless land of Crook's Creek. His strange appearance was no real concern in the place; he was just another body to try and loot. Yet somehow, they left him alone enough for him to conduct some key business. He purchased an old bar, formerly used by Lucky's Looters as a front for illicit gambling. This bar started as his place of residence, but as time progressed, it became the hideout now known as Chateau Non Loft. He was able to secure the contents of an old library from Cali's Cheats at a steal, as they mostly meant to use the books as hollowed out transportation for their illicit substances. He bought a one-use Ring of Fireball from Barone's Busters, their boutiques also able to provide the latest in discreet, disposable weaponry. And finally, his least morally correct purchase, a fresh human corpse from Graggy's Grunts. Of course, stolen and/or taken from one of the many victims of the families, not one made for AL. That would be absurd.
Within his residence, and with all the materials to begin his experiments, he proceeded. Within the basement of the bar, he gathered all his materials, setting aside two crystals: one for the last step, and one for the future. He worked tirelessly over the course of a day, delicately positioning, re-arranging, and embedding crystal shards and Wovenstone chunks into the body, shaping it until AL was satisfied by the amount of material saturating the body. Finally, he embedded one of the crystals he had set aside. He had placed one of those crystals connecting to the corpse's heart, and the last crystal was placed coming out of the body, touching the one connected to the heart. The last he remembered of that was him pointing the ring at the exposed crystal, speaking the word to activate it.
And then he heard some words in Common.
"Who... am I?"
This thing was like him. It glowed softly with the humming power of magic running through it.
"You?" He couldn't stop himself from laughing until he fell down.
"You, my friend... are my greatest creation. I shall call you... Vessel."
Ouroboros (825PR)[edit | edit source]
A snake eats its own tail, and two minds shatter.
Days. Weeks. Months spent chasing his own tail.
Searching for someone, who was always one step ahead.
One step behind. Because there was no chase necessary.
He was chasing himself. Searching for someone already there.
The lost soul found himself.
But the cycle continues.
Because he lost his creation.
