Construct

**Constructs** are magical mechanisms inhabited by the presence of a living creature, making them intelligent and self-aware. In all known cases, Constructs are people - or most of a person - encased in a mechanical body, operating on the same basic principles as the magical prosthetics crafted by the Librarians - though taken to the extreme. The person inside a Construct is referred to as the Controller, or sometimes alternatively the Pilot.

The organic body of the Controller is the most vulnerable part of a Construct, weak not only to damage but also to the passage of time. A Controller's flesh was sustained with magic to make them effectively immortal, but this magic could fail if a Construct was poorly maintained, making the Controller wither, die and rot inside their mechanical body. With the disappearance of magic in the 12th-13th centuries, almost all Constructs ceased to function and entered a dormant state, using the bare minimum of energy to keep themselves alive. The majority of Constructs did not survive this dormancy; when magic returned at the onset of the Imperial Civil War, only a quarter of known Constructs awoke - many of which were killed and destroyed in the war. If magic should ever return again, scholars expect to be able to count the number of re-awoken Constructs on one hand.

## Mortal Constructs

Mortal Constructs are those Constructs using a mortal as a Controller. By far the most famous Mortal Constructs are the Golden Legion of Chalparna, made by the ancient Gold Elves, and the Custodians of the Red Library, though these two groups are not the only ones known to historians.

The knowledge of how to create Mortal Constructs was lost either during or shortly afterwards the Annihilation - with the sole exception of the Librarians, who continued to create their Custodians until the disappearance of magic. The Librarians generally keep quiet about the secrets of their magical technology as a rule, but how they made the Custodians was by far their best-kept secret. Only a handful of Librarians ever knew how to create them at any given time, and their knowledge died along with magic in the 12th-13th centuries, meaning another can never be created even if magic should return again.

Though the Librarians kept silent on how the Custodians were made, they were open about who their Custodians were; they were all accomplished scholars, mages or warriors (often all three) who were close to death, either from age or grievous injury, and volunteered to escape death and serve the Library for eternity in the body of a Custodian. Since all Custodians are respected and venerated members of Librarian society - both before and after gaining a mechanical body - the now-dormant (and likely deceased) Custodians are lovingly maintained and cared for by the Librarians. Custodians have no mouths and cannot speak, but they communicated with their Librarian kin through sign language and writing.

The other most famous group of Mortal Constructs, the Golden Legion, were built by the Gold Elves before the Annihilation and presumably all have Gold Elves within them. Though the Gold Elf race was supposedly intelligent and wise, the Constructs of the Golden Legion were rather simple-minded; likely a consequence of their extreme age and the physical, mental and magical trauma caused by the Annihilation. They struggled to communicate, and were generally incapable of comprehending much of the world beyond who their master was - typically conveyed through possession of Gold Elf relics - and who their enemies were.

## Dread Constructs

Dread Constructs are those Constructs using a demon as a Controller, built by Dreadfolk or Dread Titans. Whereas the knowledge of how to make Constructs was lost to mortals outside of the Red Library, they continued to be produced in their hundreds of thousands in the Dreadlands. They were primarily war machines used in the never-ending battles between the Dread Titans and their legions, but many also entered this world to make war against mortals.

Whereas Mortal Constructs were almost always humanoid in shape - because a humanoid Controller would have serious trouble controlling a non-humanoid body - Dread Constructs were recorded as coming in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. Humanoid Constructs still made up the majority, but there were also those in the shapes of naval ships - which arrived in this world en masse during the Imperial Civil War - as well as some which took on a quadrupedal stance, or had a Centaur-like appearance. There have also been reports from those few individuals who went to the Dreadlands and survived to tell the tale that the Dreadlands have entire structures which are themselves Constructs, such as fortresses that are able to dynamically react to invaders, or autonomous factories that produce arms and armour by themselves.

Though it has never been confirmed by hard evidence, interviews conducted by Inquisitors seem to imply that Dread Constructs frequently made use of the phenomenon of Chaos - that is, the tendency of strong emotional states to weaken the barrier between the Magestream and the physical world, enabling more energy to be drawn out of it - by inflicting pain onto the Controller. It has been theorised that the master of a Dread Construct would inflict agony upon the Controller - or the Construct itself would do this passively - when in battle, only to release the Controller from the pain once their enemies were killed. This way, not only would the Construct gain access to more powerful magic through Chaos, but the Controller would have an extremely strong motivation to slay their foes quickly in order to escape the pain. This may explain why Dread Constructs were frequently described as being in a "berserker rage", assailing their enemies with overwhelming aggression and with little concern for their own safety.

Dread Constructs could also be much larger than any recorded Mortal Construct. As mentioned, many ships built in the Dreadlands were Constructs - such vessels are known as Demon Ships, and had a smaller crew requirement than their mundane counterparts because they could perform many functions autonomously (e.g. changing the sails). Such vessels could rival Imperial first-rate threedecker ships of the line in their size, but were more often twodeckers.

Some land-based Dread Constructs could be even larger, however. During the Imperial Civil War, there were five so-called Mechanical Titans (not to be confused with the locomotive of the Great Imperial Express, also called the *Mechanical Titan*) which were colossal Constructs that towered over walls and temples. They seem to have been envisioned as the ultimate siege engine, as they were mostly used against fortified positions and they were capable of obliterating them with their monstrous magic or simply their sheer physical power. They were used less frequently in pitched battles - though they were still used - as their immense size was less of an asset in this situation and merely made them a target for artillery. Given just how big the Mechanical Titans were, it has been theorised that they were actually multiple Constructs joined together, with each one handling a different specific function of the overall system.