Some homebrew D&D lore

Shabbat shalom to everyone being bad like me and still hanging out on Reddit after hours!

I’m an avid D&D player and like some have brought up, I’m a little leery of the use of golems in fantasy settings (and anything implying to be based on kabbalah in general). But I also love incorporating Jewishness into my hobbies, so I cooked up some lore for two diverging magic schools, and thought I’d also share it here in case any Jewish gamers wanted to snag it. Based partially off the comment ‘mechromancy is golem-making for Anglicans’. Onward.

Animation Magic (or Locomotive Magic) is a broad umbrella term for magic used to make inanimate objects move. It’s not quite the same as magic that, by its power, pushes, pulls, lifts, or lowers something, but rather causes an object to move under its own power, at times anthropomorphising it to do so – ex. animating a broom to fetch water from a well, causing it to sprout arms and walk on its bristles.

Animation Magic can be temporary, sustained, or self-perpetuating. A magician may bind an object to them and draw on their own life force to power it, but it’s more likely they use a secondary source, such as a gem, potions, or living matter.

A subcategory of Animation Magic is Mechromancy. Mechromancy is Animation Magic performed on metal constructs, such as tin toys or suits of armour. Often Mechromancers will craft complex ‘bodies’ for their subjects, in order to minimise the amount of power needed to sustain the spell: for example, it is less costly to make one gear turn for an hour, setting other gears and levers in motion, than it is to cause something to walk or climb wholesale. Depending on where in the world the Mechromancer resides, they may employ lightning or fire magic to further power their constructs. Most Mechromancy constructs are not sentient; however, there have been rumours that constructs powered by animals take on some level of self-awareness.

Another subcategory of Animation Magic is Golemancy. Unlike Mechromancy, Golemancy is more closely related to alchemy and White Magic, and involves using alphabetic magic to coax life or a ‘soul’ into a clay or wood construct. The form this life or ‘soul’ takes is dependent on the words used to craft them, so Golemancy is often the practice of monks and scholars. Over time, certain communities in which Golemancy is popular have created incredibly complex stock spells, copied down in scrolls and tomes, for everything from guards to gardeners.

The evocation of a ‘soul’ in Golemancy is the subject of some theological and academic debate. It is generally agreed that golems are creatures of ‘exponential habit’; that is to say, repeated action will cause the golem to become more and more specific and intense in its behaviours. There are stories of golems built for war or defense going rogue and attacking their own towns, or bricklaying golems creating walls that stretch on for a mile in one direction. As such, most single-purpose golems have relatively short lifespans, to prevent this obsessive behaviour from manifesting. That said, the most advanced Golemancers claim to be able to craft even-tempered, intellectual golems, though proof of this is both scarce and suspect, and even they admit that it has as much to do with nurture as spellcraft.