[D'sP] The System Speaks Up - Chapter 304

Doyle leans back, ‘Okay, so I’m a bit weak on the faith aspect.’

Ally nods, ‘Yes, you personally are. Good thing you’re not the only human around. Faith, despite what people may believe, isn’t a personal thing. Yes, you may or may not personally have faith in something, but that is only a single grain of sand in a desert. Whether your grain is red, white, yellow, or black doesn’t matter if every other grain is another color.

‘However, don’t take that to mean each grain isn’t important, especially from a sapient. All those beast deities, getting faith from non-sapient animals? They might as well be drinking water compared to the cream that is faith from a sapient who freely chose to believe. Free will isn’t the end all, be all of faith, but belief not backed by it is just worse on a qualitative level that quantity can’t make up for.’

Doyle nods, ‘Interesting, now how do I use faith with my golems?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Are you saying you didn’t try to make a golem from one myth or another?’

Doyle, ‘Well, I did try this one method, but I don’t know the language you’re supposed to use for the written part so it didn’t work.’

Ally gestures with both hands. ‘There! That is using faith! Because your people believe it, a golem could be animated through it.

‘Of course, that likely isn’t the actual manner you want to use for this. Rather, you need to dive into symbolism that people will recognize. I know you don’t want to reveal the fact you’re awake, so that limits you. However, simple symbols can sometimes provide the largest boost because the belief behind them is broader.’

Doyle sighed, ‘Well, when I remember any, I’ll include it. Besides, I feel a bunch of beliefs might have shifted recently.’

Ally shrugs, ‘That is perfectly fine. After all, symbolism and such tends to be something you can tack on, instead of pattern defining. Not that it can’t be. I just don’t see you to be the type to make a pattern based specifically on one form of temple guardian or some such.’

Doyle nods, ‘Gargoyles and foo dogs are cool, but in the end limiting. Also, I’m pretty sure they’re actual creatures now? If I’m just going to mimic a creature, it will be part of a broader creature pattern.’

Ally, ‘Besides, if you were to make any guardian golems, you would be better off focusing on a trio of other critters to pull from. With your start and connections, you would want shadow wolves, herb cows, and fire goats.’

Doyle, ‘I must admit, those fire goats I saw while experiencing all of Goat were amazing.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Most species descended directly from deities and their companions generally are.’

Doyle, ‘So, I’ve got a good idea of what I want for my first golems. Any suggestions on the size I should aim for? They’re clay so I guess it would be mass.’

Ally, ‘Mass and volume for a golem works in magnitudes with some minor focus on parts of ten. So a golem that masses ten kilograms and 99 kilograms are in the same bracket. This can lead to a large variance in size, but for a golem that is measured in mass, the most compact form tends to be the strongest.

‘There is, like I said, some attention paid to tenths. So ten to 19 kilograms would be a different sub-bracket compared to 20 to 29 or as above, 90 to 99. However, it is only tenths of the current bracket so 109 and 110 would not count as different.

‘Also of note, those sub-brackets are more about energy expenditure than actual power. So with all that in mind? I suggest either the lower end of the base kilogram range for a swarming golem or a higher end of the tens kilogram range for a humanoid scale defender.’

Doyle, ‘So far I’ve been building small because it is easier to test.’

Ally shrugs, ‘You can, of course, make super tiny golems. The problem is you either are forced into making them a swarm because of upkeep cost or they just end up too weak. Later on with better material, you can make a high power yet small golem.

‘Right now? You have regular clay to work with. As it is, a kilogram golem is going to be small enough that people can kill them by stepping on them. Any smaller and they might start accidentally killing them.’

Doyle pauses and takes a moment to check how much a kilogram of clay actually is. ‘Oh, yeah, a kilogram of clay is just fine. I was never all that good at picturing the amount of stuff like that. If anything, I would probably end up in the tens.’

Ally nods, ‘Fair enough. While for swarming, the tens is less than stellar, the ten to 99 range covers quite a lot. How about you whip up a quick example and we can work from there?’

This request takes Doyle a couple days to complete. While he had a perfectly good golem before, that had been under the assumption that he could just make whatever golems he wanted in the future. Not that he couldn’t, but without the pattern he would have to actually craft each one and floor automation wouldn’t do that for him. It needed that creative spark.

So instead of throwing together the same humanoid blob, Doyle took some time to figure out what would be best for him. The upside being that golems mostly took care of their own movement. Whether you made them two legs, three, four, or had them jumping around in a single leg their magic could manage it, even the most basic.

That alone had Doyle considering some metal golems in the form of disguising robots, but that wasn’t for the actual dungeon. No, a simple clay shape with room to grow. That was the ticket.

The only question was what shape? As much as Doyle is used to the human form, that isn’t quite what he wants. While movement comes as second nature to a golem, the complexity of walking on two legs still eats into some mind space. Though a basic quadruped form isn’t going to fit what he wants, either.

After a bit of rumination, Doyle narrows it down to two shapes. Ape and Taur. Both provide a more stable movement paradigm, and provide hands that can be easily turned towards combat.

The ape shape is, of course, the more natural shape for Doyle’s home world and quite close to humanoid in form. However, longer arms allow the form to knuckle walk while maintaining the differentiation between legs and arms. In fact, Doyle first attempted to have the shape fit under the humanoid category, but the system wasn’t having it.

Which was a big deal. The system rarely, if ever, has something to say about things so when it popped up a warning about the golem. Well, suffice it to say, Doyle was shocked, even if it was a little light on details.

{Knuckle walking, not bipedal}

Then it said the same thing except about it not being a quadruped when came at from the other direction. Doyle was a little confused about this, but fair enough, knuckle walking wasn’t exactly a bipedal form of movement. However, if what he could remember from some science class in the murky past, knuckle walking was counted as quadrupedal movement.

Doyle could only sigh and move on. Not that he is giving up on the form. It isn’t some perfect mix of the two forms, but it has a certain versatility to it that might win out.

Except a taur form seems perfect for what Doyle wants. A form that, despite the myths heavily featuring centaurs, tends to be most commonly seen among sapient insects. After all, without heavy doses of magic, you need to start with something that is already a hexapod.

A human torso on a horse’s body? That requires a high fantasy realm. One where stuff like deities directly creating their people or people coming into existence from nothing has actually happened.

Of course, you could always blame it on a wizard. The mad researcher type the multiverse over has certainly put together stranger combinations. Just look at the owlbear! Such a strange combination and yet so common a creation that at some point they started popping up as natural creatures in some universes.

Though with thoughts of hexapods in mind, Doyle decided to try his own but if fun. An ape build with an extra pair of arms. This certainly wasn’t new as he remembered seeing a four armed gorilla in a roleplaying game before.

In fact, it stuck out to him because he felt what they did to it over the editions was kind of mean. From a magical beast like any other animal, to an evil magical beast, and the last time he had checked it was down as an unaligned monstrosity. Which to Doyle is almost worse than being evil.

Though of course the system wasn’t being at all kind in categorizing things and so the four armed ape form was a different pattern as well. Still, it was a decent form, such that Doyle was considering if he should start with two golem patterns. The only problem with this is that his next floor was going to be based on a flying monster.

That left digging into the taur form even deeper. Would it work? Yes. As Ally had pointed out, sapient insects tend to evolve towards the form. Of course, outside influences abound and so the tendency isn’t the end all be all.

A good example of this is Doyle’s home universe. Since it is primed towards the humanoid form, most sapient insects will instead end up with bipedal folk and kin forms. Still hexapod in nature, though even that would be deemphasized, with one pair of arms being much smaller and weaker to the point of almost being useless. Though some may instead go down the route of having wings if they would be filling the position of queen or are a male.

Doyle stopped that train of thought and centered himself. There was just something about the taur form that didn’t quite fit what he wanted and he was subconsciously avoiding it. What was the problem?

A simple enough design. Four legs, two arms, head optional except it looked creepy without. There were already quadrupeds and bipeds in the dungeon and a taur golem would just be a different take on the quadruped. Doyle couldn’t see what wasn’t working for him as it would work just as well as the hexapod ape form.

Ally ended up being the one who figured it out. It took her a while, but then it was super obvious. ‘Uh, mostly certain the taur golem is way heavier than the hexape.’

Doyle turned to the two example golems and felt stupid for not realizing it. The taur had an extra torso compared to the hexapod ape form. It hadn’t been obvious because he had been making small models of equal size.

Not to say the taur form didn’t have some advantages over the other. However, whether you measure by mass or volume, a taur takes up way more space than just shoving an extra pair of arms on an ape. In fact, golems make this even easier because you don’t have to worry about fitting all the joints and muscles in properly.

Mind made up, Doyle turns towards making a full sized four-armed ape golem to test it out. Though independent of that, he is also weaving together how the next floor will work. After all, many birds live in trees, something an ape has some experience with as well.

Doyle hadn’t wanted to kick out the taur golem design just because it wasn’t a perfect fit for the next floor. He had even had some plans for how to use them, involving cliff edges and the greater stability a quadruped has to potentially push delvers off said cliffs. However, apes climbing trees and cliffs? The next floor was going to be perfect for dealing with those who meant him harm.

It Really Doesn't Like Them - Chapter 303

Almost There - Chapter 305