Forged

The Forged are a race of "living constructs". Fundamentally, forged are golems, but they differ from their more mainstream counterparts in the fact that they are actually sentient creatures, created by magically coagulating and blending metal, stone, and wood in a vat. This means that forged are far smarter than standard golems, and lack certain golem weaknesses, like not being able to benefit from healing magic... though they also have a lot of weaknesses that normal golems wouldn't; being a living construct means having the equivalent of vital organs, and thus being able to bleed out if you prod them with a sharp enough stick.
Physically, forged consist of intricate clockwork components granted motive power by enchanted springs, with hole-pierced metallic ribbon-like memory gears holding their memories of life as a forged and a soul gem containing the spiritual essence of a deceased humanoid to grant the whole thing life. These internal components are installed into a humanoid shell made up of iron, brass, steel, or even wood. Each individual forged is custom-crafted, and thusly beyond the basic humanoid shape, no two forged look alike.
== History ==
Forged were the ultimate creations of House Cannith, the House of the Dragonmark of Making. A visionary man, King Eothyr founded the Society of Imperial Artificers, an organization of learned arcanists, and set them the goal of creating an adaptive artificial being - one that could autonomously learn and adapt, but which didn't require the imprisonment of an immortal spirit or an elemental to serve as the spark of its sentience. During the chaos of the Apocalypse War, House Cannith used strange artificer magic brought back from Xen'drik to churn out enormous legions of artificial soldiers - essentially a cheaper, mass produced version of the common golem that wasn't as morally uncertain as just using the undead and didn't need to eat or sleep and don't become fatigued.The Society labored on this task for many years, working tirelessly to succeed. Sadly, King Eothyr died only a short period before they succeeded. When his son, Prince Elidyr, ascended the throne, he told the Society they had to make some changes: rumblings of unrest suggested that war was coming, and he had no need for his father's Utopian vision of a sentient construct. He needed soldiers, and he told the Society that their artificial lifeform was to fill that need.
This prompted an ideological split within the Society: some were appalled at the idea of turning these artificial beings, naive and innocent, into living weapons and fodder for the wars of man. These rogues took copies of their notes and left. Still, it wasn't enough to stop progress; the Society created their first creation forge, and soon the first of their constructs, the warforged, walked the earth. And just in time - a massive force of demon-worshipping savage humanoids launched itself against Nerath.
Warforged went on to prove significant to Nerath's battle. The empire's own treasury paid for the formation of legions of artificial soldiers, whilst nobles were offered the chance to eschew battlefield duties by paying for warforged soldiers to take the place of their men. Even some of the rogues succumbed to patriotism or pragmatism and used their private creation forges to support the war effort. The warforged weren't numerous enough to prevent the loss of King Elidyr, his heirs, and many of the most influential leaders of Nerath, sadly.
Regardless, their strength and sacrifices kept Nerath from being totally annihilated; even though the former empire crumbled into a series of independent city-states after decades of factional war and territorial squabbling, the slaughter could have been far worse. In fact, warforged continued to play a role in the fighting, and still do today. The Society of Imperial Artificers still exists today, turning out warforged troopers for profit. Some creation forges still remain in the hands of other artificers, churning out new warforged for their own ideological reasons. There's at least one creation forge that remains in the hands of a band of warforged veterans, ensuring the race has some control over its destiny. And those are just the known ones.
A sidebar addresses other possible ways of incorporating warforged into your campaign. For example, they could be an ancient race of self-propagating people, or an experiment in immortality that didn't quite work. They could be exoskeletons for some limbless species of sapients, perhaps constructed by human, dwarven or other "tinker race" allies. They might be a race of human-like beings that convert themselves into artificial creatures at certain age, or implant themselves into armored exoskeletons as part of their maturation cycle. Or your warforged could be unique; some wizard's special experiment that has either escaped or been loaned to the party by their patron. This came back to bite them when the war ended and people found out that warforged were actually sentient creatures, with individual personalities and full consciousnesses. As slavery isn't exactly kosher in Khorvaire, House Cannith was forced to turn them loose... now they're trying to figure out just what to do with themselves, especially because the special buildings that make them have officially been all shut down, so they can't "breed" like the organic races around them - which they fear is a deliberate ploy to slowly grind them into extinction.
One of the big bads of the setting is the Lord of Blades, a high-level warforged who wants to unite all of the warforged under his banner and genocide all the squishy races of the world, so he's basically goddamn Ultron Hitler. He is believed to have one of the few creation forges that remain active; however, either from damage and/or being in the Mournland, it's churning out "mutant" warforged and/or Psiforged.
Warforged-Meatbag relations are strained in most of the world. Their ability to work without sleep or breaks while not caring about the heat of the factories is causing a lot of terk er jerbs among the squishies, but their lack of history and support structure makes them vulnerable to exploitative practices and low wages humanoids wised up to long ago (though to be fair it's not like they'd have much to spend their money on to begin with when you think about it). Some Cannith outposts are alleged to hold Warforged in effective slavery by keeping them unaware of their legal freedom. They are also viewed as inherently dangerous, as a warforged with the Adamantine body feat is very difficult to damage by conventional means and they're never quite sure the tin can won't go on a rampage...
== Variants ==
Warforged Titans are much closer to the traditional golem; not entirely brainless, but nowhere near as smart as a true warforged. They make up for it by being really big (Huge sized). They typically possess a giant crushing hammer for one hand and a scything mega-axe for the other hand, although individual models may swap this out, such as replacing one hand with a siege staff (magical cannon). They are basically the Eberron version of tanks, with hollow interiors that let them carry troops into battle, as well as platforms that troops can use to fire ranged weapons, artillery, or spells from.
Warforged Colossi (singular: Colossus) are the really big brothers. They're basically magitek titans, being Gargantuan-sized versions of the Titans with magitek cannons, a freaking death ray for a head, and a really pissed off attitude. They were intended to be House Cannith's ultimate weapon, able to singlehandedly crush armies, but roughly the same day that they took to the battlefield, the Mourning happened, and so they are largely either destroyed, inoperable, or just impossible to recover.
Warforged Scouts go in the opposite direction. A fully sapient branch of the warforged family tree, Scouts are miniature warforged designed to be about the size of halflings. Why? Well, it's all in the name; they were meant to be used to sneak around the battle field to chart the terrain, spy on the enemy, launch assassination missions... aside from the whole "20ft base speed" thing, they're actually pretty good at it. As a "true" warforged variant, they're actually playable in 3e. They showed up in the Monster Manual 3.
Warforged Chargers are the missing link between the Titans and the Soldiers; smaller and smarter than Titans, but still big, dumb bruisers compared to the standard warforged. They basically look like a warforged gorilla, with stumpy legs and overly long arms that let them hunker down on all fours and sprint across the battlefield at an improved pace. Combined with beefed up armor and the strength to literally rip squishy humans limb from limb with their bare metallic hands, Chargers are basically all the best parts of a golem and a battle-trained killer gorilla. Like the scout, they appeared in the Monster Manual 3 and are technically a playable race, although they have to deal with Level Adjustment.
Psiforged are the most recently emerged warforged strain, and represent an experimental line that was just reaching production when The Mourning happened. As a result, they are the rarest of the warforged variants. As their name suggests, they are warforged created with a particular affinity for psionics, and can easily be visually distinguished from the standard Soldier model by the psi-channeling crystals that sprout, tumor-like, from their bodies. They appeared as a playable race in Magic of Eberron.
Category:Species