Warforged

X Worldbuilders:

GM James R

Once used as nothing more than forced laborers, the Warforged later used their skills and long background in labor to forge colonies of their own.

Warforged are a stone-work race made of wood fibers, carved stone, wovenstone runes, fitted plate metal, and powered by the shards of a long dead god.

Racial Features

"Dragons have a long connection to the crystals, and that connection is what makes the warforged invisible to them". - Kistonian Institute of Strange Studies

Quelmar warforged gain one additional ability:

• Crystal Core.  The crystals that make up your life energy have a fascinating interaction with Dragonkind.
  • Dragons have disadvantage on perception checks to see you.
  • You can take the Hide action from a Dragon even if you are not obscured.

Description

An internal network of tubes run through the warforged body, filled with a blood-like fluid that lubricates and nourishes their systems. Warforged learn from creation how to generate this fluid using very little more than natural resources around them. Their hands have two thick fingers and a thumb.

Notably, warforged are invisible to Dragons, this feature has led to many dragons to call warforged "Crystal Traitors".

Warforged are immune to disease, but since lycanthropy is a curse, wereforged have been seen at least once in Quelmar.

Additionally, at least some form of warforged has been mentioned in the late PR era that was described as a "little mouse warforged" which helped serve in the kingdom of Thimble Piep-Piep.

Creation

Creation of the races is a job for the gods...until one individual in the dawning days of Quelmar began a quest. Over more than a thousand years, the individual began experimentation in his cave in Kiston.

While he made great successes over time, he would later come to the mainland around 650 PR to seek assistance from a team of engineers who had made developments in the work of wovenstone. The other engineers, known as Atnas and Colin, would give the Warforged Lord the final inspiration he needed to finalize the pieces of his millennia long puzzle.

Working out of a secret workshop in Breme (the homeland of Atnas), The Warforged Lord would set himself a laboratory where he worked to create his people. The secret to prescribing life was not in how the stone was worked, but in what kind of stone was needed. Using his crystals, saved and gathered over a thousand of years, the Warforged Lord was able to finally spring life into a handful of his people. Teaching them the ways of the warforged, they began to spread.

Colin, one of the engineers, would also be able to replicate the warforged creation steps after returning to his hometown of Sneerwell, but would be unsatisfied with their free will, and would change gears to shift production back towards non-free-willed labor machines (later known as Automs), though impressed with the warforged shape, Colin's 3rd generation of automatons would mimic the warforged using pure wovenstone power.

Staying in a workshop in Breme, the Warforged Lord would continue to create more of his people until his presumed death in 795 PR.

History

Although warforged's long creation took centuries, if not millennia, those years were spent endlessly prototyping and adjusting. Warforged simply didn't exist (in any recognizable form) until they started appearing in the late 600s PR. Even then, these early bloomers were in small numbers, and were rarely ever noticed, or when noticed were written off as golems.

At some point, very golem-type warforged known as Titans were devising on the island of Kiston. These Titan Warforged were massive and unable to communicate, but could still follow simple instruction. Some warforged refer to them as the Warforged Ancients.

The warforged who would emerge into the world by 700 PR would be accosted from locals wherever they traveled due to their alien-like appearance and nature. Still a premature race, it was not long before they had been deceived into serving the races around them, no different than a golem of animated object. By 730, however, the warforged would launch their own intercontinental fight for liberation: The War of the Forged.

After the war, the warforged race would be welcomed with open arms by The Friends of Kragnux, who were looking for more soldiers to join its crusaders in a realm-wide hunt against Dragonborn and other draconic races.

The church would liberate all of its indentured warforged soldiers after The Battle of Chad, during which Pope Zarachiel would abolish the crusades entirely.

After their independence, the first major warforged colony would appear in the form of The Sky Net, built on the orbital island of Cof, located just outside of the mainland of Kiston in the center of the realm.

With a colony now in the vicinity of Kiston, the warforged would spend the last centuries of the PR era expanding their presence on the dragon mainland. Due to their ability to hide from Dragons, they were able to do most of their working and living out of sight, even going so far as to sneak into the Dragon capital, The Crystal City, to harvest more crystals to forge more warforged. Because of their presence and ability to skulk around the island, the warforged had an uneasy alliance with the Kistonian Institute of Strange Studies, which would occasionally ask small favors of the warforged to explore and report on the caves. At least 14 missions were assigned to warforged, usually involving the Crystal City.

Due to the nature of the Kiston Crystals from which they were forged, some Warforged have grown exceptional psionic abilities.

Names

Originally, the warforged did not use names, as they had no need of them. They were simply referred to as "Soldier 1", "Soldier 8", "Soldier 24", and so on. After several decades, they came to understand that other races have a need to label everything, including other beings, and hence began to use names.

Thus warforged are willing to accept whatever name other people see fit to give them, and warforged who are traveling with members of other races are generally referred to by nicknames. These nicknames tend to be either descriptors or random words.

It should be noted that a rare few warforged have retained their previous designation rather than adopt a new name. Others have dropped the "Soldier" and refer to themselves only by their number.

Notable Warforged

• "Snow", creator of warforged and founder of The Sky Net
• "Sand"
• "Hat"
• "Bones", early leader of Gearguage
• "Scope", resident of The Sky Net
• The Clockwork Dragon
  • Though not a traditional warforged, the clockwork dragon design was built by Snow, who also devised the original warforged schematics. As such, it can be considered a true warforged right down the Kiston crystals.
• Liam
• Fork
  • Fork is the only warforged NPC to appear in two campaigns so far, showing up in both It Came From Kiston and ⮞Get Submodule.
• Colin's Original Seven
  • Seven
• Eleven
• Wibble

The Sky Net

Based out of Cof, the Sky Net was founded by Snow.

The Network

The Network was a society of warforged based on the mainland of Kiston in the late PR era (founding date unknown, but they were heavily active by the time Kiston was locked in the 1200s PR)

They were said to be run by a Motherboard of Directors. It has been rumored that it was the Network that would later become a huge driving force for the creation of Alpha Complex.

The Network was known to have a maze of tunnels that ran underground in Kiston, with the most secretive passages leading directly into the heart of The Crystal City, allowing the Network to harvest and steal Existence Crystals from right under the dragon kingdom's nose.