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An Artificer that rules over Death?
🕑 Added 2024-11-26 18:09:05 +0000 UTCHello good hunter,
I've been developing something rather... unorthodox.
An artificer that fits within the twisted world of Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt.
While the artificer class remains outside the SRD's bounds, preventing its inclusion in the main book, this particular variant deserves to exist—so I'll release it for free.
The monster above one of their signature abominations—a horrific fusion of metal and reanimated flesh that you'll encounter in the Heresy of Steel adventure, where it's been further corrupted by Malach's influence.
I've commissioned artwork capturing these practitioners and their grotesque creations.
But while we await the final proofreading and artwork completion, I wanted to share the dark lore behind these deranged innovators and their lightning-infused monstrosities.
So I'll let you read the lore and pick the name which you feel is best in the poll below.
Artificer: Name Pending
"To conquer death is to strip it bare of mystery. To defy the gods is to become their equal."
— Lord Solomon, Third Fleshwright of the Scions
Before the manikin technology revolutionized artificial life, the Scions' earliest experiments emerged from the blood-soaked laboratories of the Galvanic Fleshwrights. These deranged pioneers arose during the First War's darkest hours, when desperation bred monsters and necessity justified atrocity. While their contemporary counterparts work with sterile materials like gold and ivory, Fleshwrights reveled in the vile work of grafting lightning science to still-warm flesh.
From their chambers high in what would become the Scions' Fortress, screams regularly echoed throughout the walls as Fleshwrights refined their horrific craft. Their experiments involved forcing lightning through living subjects until they discovered the precise voltage needed to animate dead tissue. The failures far outnumbered the successes—countless bodies reduced to charred husks, nervous systems burned out, muscles exploded from within.
In battle, Fleshwrights are nothing short of nightmarish. Their mastery of lightning allows them to scorch their enemies from the inside out, before raising the smoking corpses as puppets. Their signature technique involves driving electrified metal rods through nerve clusters and major organs, creating undead that spasm and twitch with unnatural speed under the absolute command of their killer. These reanimated horrors leak ozone and burned flesh, their bodies wrapped in crude metal conductors that occasionally spark and sizzle against rotting skin.
The Fleshwrights' development of resurrection chamber technology came at an unspeakable cost in human suffering. Their research required countless "fresh" subjects, leading to whispered rumors about where these specimens truly came from. Though most Fleshwrights eventually abandoned organic matter for the cleaner manikin science, the old guard continues their grotesque work. Their hidden laboratories are nightmare galleries of half-formed things suspended in lightning-charged tanks, waiting to be perfected or mercifully destroyed.
Today, the Fleshwrights operate in utmost secrecy within the fortress's highest towers. Even the Scions, who pride themselves on scientific progress at any cost, keep their distance from these deranged practitioners. While manikin achievements are celebrated in public squares, Fleshwrights toil in shadow-cloaked workshops that reek of decay. The constant hum of their generators barely masks the sounds from within—the crackle of lightning, the buzz of conductors, and sometimes, if one listens closely, the whimpers of their latest subjects as they push the boundaries between life, death, and mechanical horror.
Comments
Monkey DM
A Hunt = A Blood Moon of Rebirth :) As for how spaced out they are, depends how corrupted your world is
Lore Keeper
I've always had two question with the book of Steinhardt of which was never clear to me: How spaced out are the hunts and what qualifies as a hunt? I've been wanting to do a campaign for this book with my group and I'm prepping it now but I also want to use the Eldritch Beckoning Method and something tells me a specialized moon has something to do with Hunts.
Sean Kelley
Very, very cool! I just got done watching the "War Crime Ranger" video and this will surely add to a party of villainous characters that my party will appreciate for me throwing at them- ha ha!
Brutalocalypse
Epic
Monkey DM
couple of days I hope, depending on when the art is done, tops a week probably :)
Sean Kelley
This sounds incredibly cool and like it would make for an interesting minion-subclass! I wonder when it will be out?
